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ENGLISH  LITERATURE  DURING  THE 
LAST  HALF  CENTURY 


^^^ 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NSW  YORK   •    BOSTON   -    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TOKONTO 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

DURING 
THE  LAST  HALF  CENTURY 


J?  W.  gUNLIFFE,  D.LiT.  (University  of  London) 

FB0PE880R  OF  ENGLISH  IN  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  IN  THE  CITY 

OF  NEW  YORK,  AND  ASSOCIATE  DIRECTOR  OF  THE 

SCHOOL  OF  JOURNALISM 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1919 

AU  rights  reserved 


TR 

1919 


COPTRIGHT    1919 

Bt  the  macmillan  company 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  February,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.  Introductory 


II.  George  Meredith  (1828-1909) 

III.  Thomas  Hardy  (1840-        ) 

IV.  Samuel  Butler  (1835-1902) 
V.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  (1850-1894) 

VI.  George  Gissing  (1857-1903)      .      . 
VII.  George  Bernard  Shaw  (1856-        ) 
VIII.  RuDYARD  Kipling  (1865-        ) 
IX.  Joseph  Conrad  (1857-        ) 
X.  H.  G.  Wells  (1868-        )      . 
XI.  John  Galsworthy  (1867-        ) 
XII.  Arnold  Bennett  (1867-        ) 

XIII.  The  Irish  Movement     . 

XIV.  The  New  Poets    .... 
XV.  The  New  Novelists 


PAGE 

1 

16 

40 

59 

83 

97 

119 

151 

161 

180 

198 

213 

223 

244 

276 


PREFACE 

The  writer  of  this  volume  is  not  unconscious  of  the 
difficulties  involved  in  systematic  study  of  the  authors  of 
our  own  time  and  of  the  generation  immediately  pre- 
ceding ours;  but  as  he  has  encouraged  young  people  who 
are  preparing  themselves  for  the  writer's  task  to  make 
themselves  acquainted  with  the  works  of  the  nearer,  as 
well  as  of  the  more  remote  past,  it  seems  reasonable  that 
he  should  afford  them  what  help  he  can.  His  intention 
is  to  provide  guidance  for  firsthand  study — assistance  in 
reading  the  authors  themselves,  not  a  substitute  for  it — 
and  if  the  reader's  own  judgment  does  not  fall  in  with 
the  criticisms  here  offered,  it  is  hoped  that  no  harm  will 
be  done,  and  no  offence  taken  on  either  side.  The  best 
teaching  is  that  which  stimulates  and  encourages  the 
student  to  think  for  himself. 

The  bibliographies  aim  not  at  minute  completeness, 
but  at  the  giving  of  information  likely  to  be  useful. 

Cordial  thanks  are  offered  to  Professor  J.  B.  Fletcher 
and  Mr.  Leland  Hall  for  the  chapters  on  'Samuel  Butler,' 
and  'Joseph  Conrad'  and  to  the  publisher  of  the  Uni- 
versity Edition  of  the  Warner  Library  to  reprint  (with 
some  additions  and  revisions)  these  essays,  which  origi- 
nally appeared  in  that  series. 

It  is  hard  to  say  whether  the  making  of  this  book  was 
facilitated  or  hindered  by  the  writer's  appointment  as 
Director  of  the  London  Branch  of  the  American  Univer- 
sity Union  in  1918.     Residence  in  London,  with  access  to 


r 


viii  PREFACE 

the  British  Museum  and  Bodleian  Libraries,  was  an  un- 
doubted opportunity,  and,  within  the  hmits  imposed  by 
his  official  duties,  he  did  not  fail  to  take  advantage  of  it. 
With  more  time  at  his  disposal,  he  is  fain  to  believe  that 
he  would  have  made  this  a  better  book,  but  as  most  of  it 
was  written  before  that  date,  he  cannot  plead  war  work 
as  an  excuse  for  defects,  probably  due  to  other  causes. 
Judgments  on  recent  literature  are  necessarily  tentative, 
and  nobody  is  more  conscious  of  their  provisional  char- 
acter than  one  who  has  had  to  face  the  difficult  problem 
of  what  to  leave  out  and  what  to  include  in  a  book  of  this 
kind.  Such  as  it  is,  it  will,  he  hopes,  be  useful  to  those 
who  wish  to  continue  their  systematic  reading  beyond  the 
point  where  most  of  the  histories  of  English  literature 
leave  off. 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  DURING  THE 
LAST  HALF-CENTURY 

CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTORY 

Contemporary  literature  presents  at  first  sight  a  spec- 
tacle of  multifarious  and  even  bewildering  activity.  The 
flood  of  reading  matter  produced  by  cheap  printing  and 
quick  communication  threatens  to  swamp  the  student  by 
its  own  excess.  Yet  even  in  this  turbulent  and  ever  in- 
creasing stream  one  can  discern  certain  "main  currents" 
— prevalent  tendencies  which  the  thoughtful  reader  may 
take  note  of  for  guidance  in  his  choice  of  authors  and 
works,  and  which  may  help  him  to  appreciate  their  under- 
lying significance.  The  writers  of  the  last  half-century, 
like  those  of  other  periods,  are  subject  to  the  conditions 
under  which  they  lived,  and  react,  each  according  to  his 
own  individuality,  to  events  and  influe  ces  which  are,  in 
the  main,  common  to  all  of  them,  although  the  effect  of 
any  particular  one  varies  in  each  case,  and  the  elusive 
element  of  personality  must  always,  in  the  final  analysis, 
remain  unresolved.  A  review  of  the  general  conditions  is 
a  necessary  preliminary  to  the  study  of  individual  authors. 

The  prevailing  movement  of  English  life  during  the 
half-century  was  that  to  which  Lord  Morley  has  given  the 
loose  but  convenient  name  of  " Liberalism.'.'  The  word  is 
here  used  in  its  general  rather  than  its  restricted  meaning, 


i 


2  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

but  it  will  be  convenient  to  take  up  the  political  side  of 
the  movement  first.  Even  on  this  side,  the  liberalising  of 
English  political  life  was  not  confined  to  any  one  party. 

I  The  Second  Reform  Act  of  1867,  which  may  be  taken  as 
the  first  noteworthy  date  of  our  survey,  was  introduced 
into  the  House  of  Commons  by  a  Conservative  leader, 
Disraeli,  afterwards  Lord  Beaconsfield,  though  during 
itSTpSssage  it  was  profoundly  modified  by  the  Opposition 
under  their  great  protagonist,  Gladstone.  It  is  with  the 
name  of  the  latter  that  most  of  the  political  reforms  of 

I  the  period  are  associated.  The  first  Gladstone  Govern- 
ment (1868-1874)  gave  the  voter  the  protection  of  the 
secret  ballot,  abolished  religious  tests  in  the  universities 
.  and  the  purchase  of  commissions  in  the  army,  threw  civil 
service  appointments  open  to  competition,  and  estab- 
lished a  system  of  universal  elementary  education — 
important  steps  in  breaking  down  the  barriers  of  priv- 
ilege and  affording  opportunity  and  encouragement  for 
further  advances  in  the  direction  of  democracy.  The 
second  Gladstone  administration  (1880-1885)  by  a 
further  extension  of  the  franchise  made  democratic 
government  a  fact.  His  later  cabinets  were  engaged  in 
fruitless  attempts  to  settle  the  Irish  question;  but  already 
the  political  phase  of  reform  had  given  way  before  the 
need  for  social  legislation,  and  the  only  later  political 
measures  we  need  to  record  are  the  limitation  of  the  veto 
of  the  House  of  Lords  carried  under  the  premiership  of 

IMr.  Asquith  (1911)  and  the  extension  of  the  parliamen- 
tary suffrage  to  women,  carried  by  the  War  Ministry  of 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  (1918). 

The  impulse  to  social  reform  goes  back  a  long  way  and 
is  closely  connected  with  the  change  of  England  from  an 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

agricultural  to  a  manufacturing  country,  which  had  been 
proceeding  with  accumulative  force  for  more  than  a  cen- 
tury. The  industrial  revolution  enormously  increased 
the  national  wealth,  but  it  made  the  evils  of  poverty  more 
acute  and  more  obvious  by  concentrating  them  in  large 
urban  communities.  A  contemporary  observer  writes  of  a 
Lancashire  manufacturing  townin  1842 :  "  Anything  like 
the  squalid  misery,  the  slow,  mouldering,  putrefying  death 
by  which  the  weak  and  feeble  of  the  working  classes  are 
perishing  here,  it  never  befel  my  eyes  to  behold  nor  my 
imagination  to  conceive.  And  the  creatures  seem  to  have 
no  idea  of  resisting  or  even  repining.  They  sit  down  with 
oriental  submission,  as  if  it  was  God  and  not  the  landlord 
that  was  laying  his  hand  upon  them."  Mr.  Sidney  Webb, 
contrasting  the  condition  of  the  same  community  in  the 
twentieth  century,  says:  "Though  there  is  still  individual 
squalor  and  personal  misery  to  be  found,  the  population 
— six  times  as  numerous  as  in  1842 — may,  taken  as  a 
whole,  safely  be  described  as  prosperous,  healthy,  intel- 
lectually alert,  taking  plenty  of  hoHdays,  and  almost 
aggressive  in  its  independent  self-reliance."  This 
change,  which  was  taking  place  all  over  England  with 
increasing  force  and  rapidity  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the 
Great  War,  Mr.  Webb  ascribes  to  "a,  certain  subtle 
revolution  in  the  ideas  of  men,"  finding  expression  in 
specific  social  movements  such  as  municipal  organization, 
co-operative  distribution  and  production,  trades  union- 
ism, factory  legislation,  sanitation,  education,  collective 
provision  for  the  dependent,  the  sick,  the  aged,  the 
unemployed,  "and  all  that  vaguely  defined  social  force 
commonly  designated  socialism."  He  sums  up  the 
results  as  the  administration  on  a  communal  basis  of 


/ 


4  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"such  services,  once  entirely  a  matter  for  individual 
self-provision  by  each  household,  as  paving,  Ughting, 
and  cleansing  the  streets;  the  prevention  of  assault, 
theft,  and  damage  by  flood  or  fire;  the  removal  of  faecal 
matter  and  garbage;  the  public  supply  and  distribution 
on  a  large  scale  of  the  primary  needs  of  existence,  such 
as  water,  housing,  milk,  and  now,  in  one  place  or  another, 
even  other  food;  the  communal  provision  of  artificial 
light,  of  certain  forms  of  fuel,  and  of  hydrauHc  or  electric 
power;  the  provision  of  the  means  of  transport  and  of 
intercommunication;  the  collective  production,  in  public 
forests  or  on  drainage  farms,  or  in  connexion  with  other 
municipal  departments  or  institutions,  of  all  sorts  of 
agricultural  products,  and  of  this  or  that  manufacture; 
the  complete  and  minutely  detailed  care  of  the  orphans, 
the  sick,  the  blind,  the  deaf  and  dumb,  the  crippled,  the 
mentally  defective,  the  infirm  and  the  aged;  elaborate 
provision  for  the  special  needs  connected  with  maternity, 
infancy,  childhood,  and  the  disposal  of  the  dead;  the 
provision  of  schools  for  children  and  of  opportunities  of 
instruction  for  adolescents  and  adults,  as  well  as  of 
libraries,  museums,  and  art  galleries;  the  organization 
of  apprenticeship,  technical  education,  artistic  produc- 
tion, and  scientific  research;  the  public  organization  of 
the  labour  market;  the  prevention  and  treatment  of 
destitution  and  distress  caused  by  unemployment  or 
misfortune;  and  the  provision,  for  all  classes  and  all 
ages,  of  music  and  other  means  of  recreation,  including 
the  regulation  of  amusement  and  even  its  organization." 
The  invention  of  the  moving  picture  show  (or  cinema, 
as  it  is  usually  called  in  England)  gave  urban  communi- 
ties cheap  and  innocent  relaxation  in  the  evenings,  and 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

helped  to  reform  the  entire  programmes  of  the  music- 
halls,  so  that  they  became  places  where  the  working-man 
could  take  his  wife  and  children  without  fear  of  offence. 
Football  changed  from  a  sport  mainly  aristocratic  and 
largely  restricted  to  the  public  schools  and  universities 
to  a  great  popular  spectacle,  attracting  tens  of  thousands 
of  onlookers.  The  annual  holiday  in  the  country,  at  the 
seaside,  or  on  the  Continent,  was  extended  from  the 
middle  class  to  the  skilled  workmen,  thanks  to  the  pro- 
vision of  cheap  excursions  by  rail  and  steamer.  An 
English  cabinet  minister,  joining  with  an  English  labour 
M.  P.  in  a  survey  of  social  conditions  at  the  first  Vic- 
torian Jubilee  (1887),  could  write  with  a  sense  of  elation: 
"The  people  are  better  paid;  they  work  fewer  hours; 
they  are  better  fed,  clothed  and  housed;  they  are  better 
educated;  their  habits  and  customs  are  improved;  their 
sports  and  pastimes  are  no  longer  brutal  and  demoralizing. 
The  children  and  women  are  better  cared  for  and  better 
treated.  The  wheels  of  progress  have  gone  on  and  on 
with  accelerated  speed."  Even  so  pessimistic  an  ob- 
server as  George  Gissing  saw  in  the  second  Jubilee  "a 
legitimate  triumph  of  the  average  man.  Look  back  for 
threescore  years,  and  who  shall  affect  to  doubt  that  the 
time  has  been  marked  by  many  improvements  in  the 
material  life  of  the  English  people?  Often  have  they 
been  at  loggerheads  among  themselves,  but  they  have 
never  flown  at  each  other's  throats,  and  from  every  grave 
dispute  has  resulted  some  substantial  gain.  They  are  a 
cleaner  people  and  a  more  sober;  in  every  class  there  is  a 
diminution  of  brutality;  education — stand  for  what  it 
may — has  notably  extended;  certain  forms  of  tyranny 
have  been  abolished;  certain  forms  of  suffering,  due  to 


6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

heedlessness  or  ignorance,  have  been  abated."  This 
continued  to  hold  true  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  War, 
and  though  the  process  of  remedial  legislation  was  ar- 
rested by  the  necessary  concentration  of  the  energies 
of  the  nation  on  military  measures,  the  resulting  demand 
for  labour,  skilled  and  unskilled,  in  the  manufacture  of 
munitions  and  other  supplies,  produced  plentiful  employ- 
ment at  high  wages  for  women  as  well  as  men,  and  miti- 
gated the  lot  of  the  poorest  while  it  diminished  the  ex- 
penditure of  the  well-to-do.  In  spite  of  sporadic  extrav- 
agance among  those  to  whom  the  War  brought  extraordi- 
nary profits,  and  widespread  deprivation  owing  to  high 
prices  and  restriction  of  food  supplies,  the  condition  of 
the  labouring  poor  showed  continuous  improvement. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  as  the  working  people  became 
more  independent  and  more  conscious  of  their  oppor- 
tunities to  enjoy  life,  they  should  become  not  less,  but 
more  discontented  with  the  limitations  of  their  lot. 
The  more  they  did  for  themselves,  the  more  was  done 
for  them,  the  more  it  became  clear  that  there  was  much 
still  left  undone.  Poverty  and  degradation,  though 
reduced  in  amount,  remained  an  appalling  sore  in  the 
commonwealth,  and  attracted  the  earnest  and  sympa- 
thetic attention  of  all  classes.  Sir  Henry  Campbell- 
Bannerman,  who  became  premier  in  1905,  declared  two 
years  before  that  over  twelve  milhons  of  the  population 
of  Great  Britain  were  "in  the  grip  of  perpetual  poverty," 
and  on  the  verge  of  hunger.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  who 
was  responsible  for  the  National  Insurance  Act  of  1911, 
and  earned  his  reputation  as  "the  orator  of  the  new 
social  order,"  speaking  at  Glasgow  on  Scottish  Land 
Reform  a  few  months  before  the  outbreak  of  the  War, 
said : — 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

"You  have  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men — working  unceasingly 
for  wages  that  barely  bring  them  enough  bread  to  keep  themselves 
and  their  families  above  privation.  Generation  after  generation 
they  see  their  children  wither  before  their  eyes  for  lack  of  air,  light, 
and  space,  which  is  denied  them  by  men  who  have  square  miles  of 
it  for  their  own  use.  Take  our  cities,  the  great  cities  of  a  great 
Empire.  Right  in  the  heart  of  them  everywhere  you  have  ugly 
quagmires  of  human  misery,  seething,  rotting,  at  last  fermenting. 
We  pass  them  by  every  day  on  our  way  to  our  comfortable  homes. 
We  forget  that  divine  justice  never  passed  by  a  great  wrong.  You 
can  hear,  carried  by  the  breezes  from  the  north,  the  south,  the  east, 
and  the  west,  ominous  rumbling.  The  chariots  of  retribution  are 
drawing  nigh.  How  long  will  all  these  injustices  last  for  myriads  of 
men,  women,  and  children  created  in  the  image  of  God — ^how  long? 
I  believe  it  is  coming  to  an  end." 

It  was  inevitable  that  this  rapid  social  transformation, 
accompanied  as  it  was  with  a  growing  sense  of  dissatis- 
faction and  unrest,  should  react  upon  the  literature  of 
the  period  and  be  reflected  by  it.  But  the  humanitarian 
impulse  which  expressed  itself  in  social  reforms  was  not 
the  only  "subtle  revolution  in  the  ideas  of  men"  which 
influenced  and  often  distracted  the  minds  of  the  thinkers 
and  writers  of  the  time.  Democracy  was  not  a  new  idea, 
and  poverty  had  been  familiar  to  the  human  race  as  far 
back  as  its  history  runs.  The  political  and  social  revolu- 
tions were  effected  gradually,  and  the  underlying  con- 
ditions which  called  for  remedy  had  been  brought  home 
to  the  popular  conscience  by  early  Victorian  writers  such 
as  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Matthew  Arnold, 
George" Elliot,  Mrs.  Gaskell,  and  Charles  Kiiigsley;  wnose 
influence,  in  one  direction  or  another,  had  contributed 
in  no  small  degree  to  the  impetus  for  reform.  The 
disturbing  element  in  the  intellectual  outlook  of  the 
writers  of  the  new  generation  came,  not  so  much  from 


I 


8  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

the  application  of  science  to  means  of  production  and  the 
subsequent  organization  of  industrial  communities,  as 
from  the  effect  of  scientific  theory  upon  the  views  of  life, 
of  the  origin  of  the  universe  and  man's  place  in  it,  which 
had  hitherto  met  with  almost  universal  acceptance. 
The  estabUshment  of  the  theory  of  evolution  by  natural 
selection  was  the  great  intellectual  event  of  the  century; 
indeed  one  must  go  back  to  the  substitution  of  the  Coper- 
nican  for  the  Ptolemaic  system  to  find  a  parallel.  The 
capital  importance  of  the  new  theory  and  its  implications 
was  emphasized  and  brought  home  to  the  pubUc  by  an 
almost  dramatic  setting  of  the  circumstances  of  its  first 
publication  and  the  clash  of  opinion  that  followed. 
Darwin's  long  years  of  patient  investigation  came  to  a 
sudden  climax  owing  to  the  simultaneous  arrival  of 
A.  R.  Wallace,  after  much  briefer  research,  at  the  same 
conclusion,  and  the  theory  of  natural  selection  received 
additional  weight,  not  merely  from  this  coincidence, 
but  from  the  joint  publication  of  the  two  papers, — in 
itself  an  example  of  the  single-minded  search  after  truth 
which  became  the  watchword  of  modern  science.  In 
the  fuller  presentation  of  the  evidence  in  'The  Origin  of 
Species^'^ptlblished lat  (  r  in  the  same  year  (1859),  Darwin 
a'V'Sided  anjr  insistence  on  the  question  of  man's  place  in 
nature,  which  was  obviously  involved  in  the  new  theory, 
but  his  ecclesiastical  opponents  at  once  seized  upon  this 
as  the  main  issue,  and  forced  it  to  the  front.  Strategi- 
cally, they  were  right,  if  they  were  to  maintain  the  posi- 
tion of  authority  the  Church  had  enjoyed  for  centuries, 
although  their  tactics  led  to  an  immediate  defeat  which 
was  prophetic  of  the  ultimate  decision.  The  famous 
passage  at  arms  between  Huxley  and  Bishop  Wilberforce, 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

who  undertook  "to  smash  Darwin"  at  the  Oxford  meet- 
ing of  the  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science  in  1860,  not  merely  apprised  the  champions  of 
orthodoxy  of  the  arrival  in  the  arena  of  a  new  antagonist, 
full  of  intellectual  energy  and  skilled  in  debate,  but 
brought  them  face  to  face  with  an  issue  on  which  the 
evidence,  ever  accumulating,  left  them  no  chance  of 
holding  their  original  position.  The  advocates  of  the 
new  theory  had  of  course  to  weather  a  storm  of  mis- 
representation and  obloquy.  For  ten  years,  says  Mr. 
Leonard  Huxley  in  the  biography  of  his  father,  which 
should  be  consulted  for  fuller  details  of  the  conflict,  "he 
was  commonly  identified  with  the  championship  of  the 
most  unpopular  view  of  the  time;  a  fighter,  an  assailant 
of  long-established  fallacies,  he  was  too  often  considered 
a  mere  iconoclast,  a  subverter  of  every  other  well-rooted 
institution,  theological,  educational,  or  moral."  But 
the  storm  was  soon  over,  and  the  very  violence  of  the 
opposition,  by  attracting  universal  attention,  led  to  a 
speedy  acceptance  of  the  new  theory,  which  Lord  Salis- 
bury, as  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Oxford,  came 
to  acknowledge  in  Huxley's  presence  as  having  received 
the  unanimous  assent  of  the  scientific  world. 

The  acceptance  was  indeed  so  general,  especially  among 
the  opposing  forces,  which  made  haste  to  abandon  a 
position  proved  untenable,  that  the  victory  was  almost 
robbed,  for  the  time  being,  of  its  full  significance,  though 
it  was  of  course  not  hidden  to  the  leaders  of  the  new 
movement.  Huxley  wrote  to  his  wife  in  1873:  "The 
part  I  have  to  play  is  not  to  found  a  new  school  of  thought 
or  to  reconcile  the  antagonisms  of  the  old  schools.  We 
are  in  the  midst  of  a  gigantic  movement  greater  than 


10  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

that  which  preceded  and  produced  the  Reformation,  and 
really  only  the  continuation  of  that  movement.  But 
there  is  nothing  new  in  the  ideas  which  lie  at  the  bottom 
of  the  movement,  nor  is  any  reconcilement  possible  be- 
tween free  thought  and  traditional  authority.  One  or 
other  will  have  to  succumb  after  a  struggle  of  unknown 
duration,  which  will  have  as  side  issues  vast  political  and 
social  troubles.  I  have  no  more  doubt  that  free  thought 
will  win  in  the  long  run  than  I  have  that  I  sit  here  writing 
to  you,  or  that  this  free  thought  will  organise  itself  into 
a  coherent  system,  embracing  human  life  and  the  world 
as  one  harmonious  whole.  But  this  organization  will 
be  the  work  of  generations  of  men,  and  those  who  further 
it  most  will  be  those  who  teach  men  to  rest  in  no  lie,  and 
to  rest  in  no  verbal  delusions."  Tyndall's  presidential 
address  to  the  British  Association  at  Belfast  in  1894  also 
breathes  the  atmosphere  of  battle.  "All  religious 
theories,  schemes  and  systems,  which  embrace  notions 
of  cosmogony,  or  which  otherwise  reach  into  the  domain 
of  science,  must,  in  so  far  as  they  do  this,  submit  to  the 
control  of  science,  and  rehnquish  all  thought  of  controlling 
it.  Acting  otherwise  proved  disastrous  in  the  past,  and 
it  is  simply  fatuous  to-day."  For  ''the  domain  of 
science"  Tyndall  made  a  large  claim: — 


"Divorced  from  matter,  where  is  life  to  be  found?  Whatever  our 
faith  may  say,  our  knowledge  shows  them  to  be  indissolubly  joined. 
Every  meal  we  eat,  and  every  cup  we  drink,  illustrates  the  mysterious 
control  of  Mind  by  Matter.   .   .   . 

"BeUeving  as  I  do  in  the  continuity  of  Nature,  I  cannot  stop 
abruptly  where  our  microscopes  cease  to  be  of  use.  Here  the  vision 
of  the  mind  authoritatively  supplements  the  vision  of  the  eye.  By 
an  intellectual  necessity  I  cross  the  boundary  of  the  experimental 
evidence,  and  discern  in  the  Matter  which  we,  in  our  ignorance  of  its 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

latent  powers,  and  notwithstanding  our  professed  reverence  for  its 
Creator,  have  hitherto  covered  with  opprobrium,  the  promise  and 
potency  of  all  terrestrial  Life." 

The  Presbytery  of  Belfast  passed  a  resolution  in  which 
they  described  Professors  Huxley  and  Tyndall  as  "ignor- 
ing the  existence  of  God,  and  advocating  pure  and  simple 
materialism."  Tyndall  frankly  accepted  the  challenge 
in  his  rejoinder:  "Had  the  possessive  pronoun  'our'  pre- 
ceded 'God,'  and  had  the  words  'what  we  consider' 
preceded  'pure,'  this  statement  would  have  been  objec- 
tively true." 

The  note  of  intense  conviction,  passionate  earnestness, 
and  absolute  confidence,  which  vibrates  in  the  passages 
from  Tyndall  and  Huxley  just  quoted,  was  in  part 
temperaSiental,  but  rTDP^s  also  due  to  the  astonishingly 
rapid  triumph  of  a  new  theory  of  far-reaching  significance. 
This  produced  on  the  part  of  some  men  of  science  a 
dogmatism  which  went  far  to  rival  that  of  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal opponents  they  had  worsted.  Professor  Henry 
Fairfield  Osborn,  of  Columbia  University,  whose  emi- 
nence in  the  world  of  science  will  not  be  disputed,  says 
in  his  'Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life'  (1917):  "Biology, 
like  theology,  has  its  dogmas.  Leaders  have  their 
disciples  and  blind  followers.  All  great  truths,  like 
Darwin's  law  of  selection,  acquire  a  momentum  which 
sustains  half-truths  and  pure  dogmas."  Mr.  H.  G. 
Wells,  in  the  amusing  sketch  of  contemporary  personal- 
ities he  has  given  to  the  world  under  the  name  of  'Boon' 
(1915),  caricatures  the  dogmatism  of  agnostic  scieifBfe  in 
the  figure  of  Dodd,  "one  of  those  Middle  Victorians  who 
go  about  with  a  preoccupied,  caulking  air,  as  though, 
after  having  been  at  great  cost  and  pains  to  banish  God 


M 


12  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

from  the  Universe,  they  were  resolved  not  to  permit 
Him  back  on  any  terms  whatever.  He  has  constituted 
himself  a  sort  of  alert  customs  officer  of  a  materiaUstic  age, 
saying  suspiciously, '  Here,  now,  what's  this  rapping  under 
the  table  here?'  and  examining  every  proposition  to  see 
that  the  Creator  wasn't  being  smuggled  back  under  some 
specious  new  generahzation.  Boon  used  to  declare  that 
every  night  Dodd  looked  under  his  bed  for  the  Deity,  and 
slept  with  a  large  revolver  under  his  pillow  for  fear  of  a  rev- 
elation." On  minds  of  more  dehcate  texture,  in  which  the 
older  faith  kept  its  emotional  hold  in  spite  of  intellectual 
difficulties,  the  necessary  adjustment  to  new  and  revolu- 
tionary views  of  nature  and  man's  place  in  the  scheme 
of  things  was  often  painfully  disconcerting  and  some- 
times, for  a  time  at  least,  devastating.  We  have  an 
admirable  picture  of  the  gradual  and  peaceful  liberation 
of  a  young  mind  from  traditional  beliefs  in  Mr.  Edmund 
Gosse's  autobiographical  'Father  and  Son'  (1907),  but  in 
many  cases  there  were  stages"  6t  'fl'6|5ression,  confusion, 
and  dismay.  Messrs.  Sidney  Low  and  Lloyd  C.  Sanders, 
authors  of  '  The  History  of  England  during  the  Reign  of 
Victoria, '  concluding  their  survey  of  the  achievements  of 
the  period,  record  the  impression:  "To  some  pessimists 
the  orthodoxy  of  economics,  the  orthodoxy  of  science, 
and  the  orthodoxy  of  faith  seemed  alike  'bankrupt.'" 
Even  so  acute  a  thinker  and  so  detached  an  observer  as 
Professor  Henry  Sidgwick,  writing  at  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  looking  back  over  the  victory  for 
liberaHsm  he  had  helped  to  win,  says:  ''Well,  the  years 
pass,  the  struggle  with  what  Carlyle  used  to  call '  Hebrew 
old  clothes'  is  over,  Freedom  is  won,  and  what  does 
Freedom  bring  us  to?     It  brings  us  face  to  face  with 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

atheistic  science:  the  faith  in  God  and  Immortahty, 
which  we  had  been  strugghng  to  clear  from  superstition, 
suddenly  seems  to  be  in  the  air."  This  attitude  was 
characteristic  of  the  more  moderate  leaders  of  liberal 
thought  at  the  turn  of  the  century,  and  there  was  no 
prominent  writer  of  the  period  who  escaped  altogether 
from  the  quickening  and  disturbing  effects  of  the  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis  and  its  imphcations. 

Limitations  and  modifications  of  the  theory  of  natural 
selection  came  in  due  course  from  the  scientists  them- 
selves. The  tone  of  dogmatic  confidence  which  marked 
later  Victorian  science  was  largely  mitigated  as  further 
investigation  deepened,  instead  of  explaining,  the  mys- 
tery of  the  origin  of  life.  We  may  contrast  with  Tyn- 
dall's  confident  profession  of  materialism  cited  above  the 
avowal  of  Lord  Haldane,  President  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation a  generation  later  (1908) :  "The  physico-chemical 
theory  of  life  has  not  worked  in  the  past  and  never  can 
work."  It  is  true  that  within  four  years  we  find  Pro- 
fessor Schaefer  quoting  with  approval,  from  the  same 
presidential  chair,  the  words  of  Gley:  "The  origin  and 
exercise  of  the  highest  faculties  of  man  are  conditioned 
by  the  purely  chemical  action  of  the  product  of  a  secre- 
tion." But  the  next  president,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  re- 
verted to  mysticism,  and  there  are  many  other  indications 
that  the  acceptance  of  the  mechanistic  theory  is  no  longer 
a  cardinal  doctrine  of  scientific  faith. 

The  opportunities  for  compromise  and  mutual  under- 
standing were  greatly  facilitated  by  the  more  moderate 
attitude  of  the  defenders  of  orthodoxy,  who  found  their 
citadel  undermined  from  within  as  well  as  attacked  from 
without.     The  methods  of  scientific  investigation  were 


14  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

applied  to  the  documents  on  which  Protestantism  based 
its  claims,  and  the  theory  of  development  was  found  to 
offer  new  means  of  defence  and  explanation  for  articles 
of  the  Christian  faith.  The  books  of  the  Old  and  of  the 
New  Testament,  though  robbed  of  some  of  their  ancient 
authority  by  critical  examination,  were  found  to  possess 
new  interest  and  meaning  when  interpreted  as  himian 
documents,  and  their  spiritual  significance  was  based 
upon  much  surer  foundations.  The  later  defenders  of 
the  faith  in  England  welcomed  light  from  whatever  source, 
and  the  spheres  of  reUgion  and  science  were  found  not  to 
overlap  so  much  as  the  protagonists  on  both  sides  of  the 
conflict  in  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  had 
supposed.  When  the  battle  was  over,  it  was  agreed 
that  between  religion  and  science  there  was  no  necessary 
antagonism. 

To  sum  up,  the  last  half  century  was  a  period  of  ex- 
traordinarily rapid  transition,  political,  social,  and  intel- 
lectual. Men  were  called  upon  to  adjust  their  minds, 
often  with  painful  suddenness,  to  new  systems  of  govern- 
ment, new  states  of  society,  and  new  modes  of  thought. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  while  some  accepted  the  changes 
with  enthusiasm,  others  made  the  necessary  adjustments 
with  difficulty.  Many  old  landmarks  had  disappeared, 
and  those  left  standing  were  subjected  to  an  ever  in- 
creasing fire  of  criticism  from  all  sides.  The  general 
sweep  of  thought  was  revolutionary;  there  was  no  political 
principle,  no  religious  dogma,  no  social  tradition,  no 
moral  convention  that  was  not  called  in  question.  To 
some  conservative  minds  it  appeared  merely  as  an  era  of 
destruction,  but,  powerless  to  resist  the  flood  of  change, 
they  remained  baffled  and  confused  amid  the  contending 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

currents,  which  drove  now  in  one  direction,  now  in 
another,  but  ever  onward.  Future  generations  will 
doubtless  discern  more  constructive  achievement  than 
is  obvious  to  the  contemporary  spectator,  who  is  himself 
but  an  atom  in  the  whirl  of  conflicting  tendencies,  but  a 
study  of  individual  authors  will  make  it  clear  that  the 
period  was  rich  in  accomplishment,  both  artistic  and 
intellectual.  It  is  upon  the  foundations  laid  by  the 
writers  of  the  last  half-century  that  the  present  generation 
has  built  and  must  continue  to  build;  a  new  era  was 
begun,  and  though  the  march  of  progress  was  interrupted 
by  the  Great  War,  the  first  task  of  humanity,  when  peace 
is  restored,  will  be  to  take  up  the  task  of  reconstruction, 
so  far  as  may  be,  where  the  catastrophe  of  1914  sus- 
pended it. 


CHAPTER  II 

GEORGE  MEREDITH   (1828-1909) 

*  One  has  only  to  recall  the  names  of  Browning,  Tenny- 

.  son,  Arnold  and  Swinburne  in  poetry,  and  of  Dickens, 
I  Thackeray  and  George'KTiot  in  fiction  to  realize  that  the 
I  earlier  Victorian  period  was  rich  in  both  these  important 
\  divisions  of  Uterature.  Some  of  these  writers  continued 
to  pubUsh  after  the  mid-point  of  Victoria's  reign,  but 
their  main  activity  lay  behind  it;  their  reputations  were 
established,  and  though  their  influence  was  by  no  means 
spent,  the  public  was  already  acquainted  with  their 
characteristic  ideas  and  modes  of  expression.  It  was 
otherwise  with  George  Meredith,  for  although  his  first 
poems  were  published  in  1851  and  his  first  novel  in 
1856,  his  books  were  for  the  first  thirty  years  of  his 
career  Uttle  read  and  their  purpose  hardly  understood. 
In  1867  he  wrote  to  Swinburne: '"  Vittoria'  passes  to  the 
limbo  where  the  rest  of  my  works  repose,"  and  so  late  as 
1881  he  described  himself  as  "an  unpopular  writer."  In 
1883  Mark  Pattison  said  of  him:  "Mr.  Meredith  is  well- 
known,  by  name,  to  the  widest  circle  of  readers — the 
novel  readers.  By  name,  because  his  name  is  a  label 
warning  them  not  to  touch."  Lord  Morley  in  his 
'Recollections'  prints  under  the  date  1881  the  following 
story  of  the  pubUcation,  apparently  of  'The  Tragic 
Comedians,'  in  the  'Fortnightly  Review': 

"It  was  my  good  fortune,  in  days  when  publishers  gave  him  little 
welcome,  to  be  of  use  to  him  by  printing  two,  or  was  it  three,  of  his 

16 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  17 

novels  in  the  periodical  of  which  I  then  had  charge.  Of  one  of  these 
George  Eliot  asked  me  whether  we  found  that  it  pleased  our  readers. 
I  answered  as  best  I  could.  She  said  she  had  only  discovered  one 
admirer  of  it,  a  very  eminent  man  as  it  happened,  and  even  him  she 
had  convicted  of  missing  two  whole  numbers  without  noticing  a  gap." 

All  his  life  Meredith  bore  a  grudge  against  the  British 
pubhc  for  its  lack  of  appreciation,  which  not  only  kept 
him,  as  he  put  it,  "always  jogging  for  a  shilling,"  but 
left  him  without  the  stimulating  and  restraining  influence 
of  contact  with  a  wide  circle  of  readers.  He  was  himself 
conscious  of  the  latter  disadvantage,  as  well  as  of  the 
former,  commenting  bitterly:  "Who  really  cares  for 
what  I  say?  The  English  people  know  nothing  about 
me.  There  has  always  been  something  antipathetic 
between  them  and  me.  With  book  after  book  it  was 
always  the  same  outcry  of  censure  and  disapproval.  The 
first  time  or  two  I  minded  it;  then  I  determined  to  dis- 
regard what  people  said  altogether,  and  since  than  I  have 
written  only  to  please  myself."  And  again:  "I  am,  I 
moan  to  think,  disdainful  of  an  Enghsh  pubhc,  and  am 
beset  by  the  devils  of  satire  when  I  look  on  it.  That  is 
not  a  good  state  for  composition,  although  I  have  press- 
ing matter,  many  themes  to  work  out  before  I  take  the 
flight"  (1888).  In  1902  he  still  wrote  of  himself  as  "an 
unpopular  novelist  and  an  unaccepted  poet."  He  was 
correspondingly  grateful  for  the  appreciation  of  his 
work  in  the  United  States,  "I  am  justly  flattered  by 
their  praise,  if  I  win  it;  their  censure,  if  they  deal  it  to 
me,  I  meditate  on."  The  admirable  letter  to  Professor 
G.  P.  Baker,  of  Harvard  University,  written  the  following 
year,  is  conceived  in  the  same  spirit  of  gratitude — and 
almost  humble  gratitude.     In   1888,  he  acknowledged 


18  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  stimulus  to  composition  he  had  received  from  Ameri- 
can recognition.  "The  touch  of  American  money  has 
impressed  me  with  concrete  ideas  of  fame."  In  one  of 
his  very  last  letters,  he  complained  of  his  lack  of  accept- 
ance by  the  British  pubUc  as  a  poet,  and  added:  "In- 
deed, the  run  of  my  novels  started  from  American 
appreciation." 

Born  at  Portsmouth  and  educated  in  part  at  the 
Moravian  school  at  Neuwied  near  Cologne,  Meredith 
made  futile  excursions  into  law  and  journalism,  though 
his  engagement  as  a  war  correspondent  for  the  *  Morning 
Post'  in  the  summer  of  1866  gave  additional  vividness 
to  the  Italian  scenes  of  '  Vittoria, '  of  which  the  title  was 
to  have  been  'EmiHa  in  Italy,'  to  parallel  'Emilia  in 
England,'  the  original  title  of  'Sandra  Belloni,'  of  which 
'Vittoria'  is  the  sequel.  About  the  same  time  he  ob- 
tained a  regular  income  as  reader  for  the  pubUshing 
firm  of  Chapman  and  Hall  and  took  the  editorship  of 
the  'Fortnightly  Review,'  their  most  important  literary 
enterprise,  in  place  of  his  friend  John  Morley,  when  the 
latter  was  sent  on  an  official  mission  to  the  United  States 
in  1867.  Meredith's  early  career  was  further  hampered 
by  his  marriage  at  twenty-one  with  the  daughter  of 
Thomas  Love  Peacock;  they  were  ill-mated.  "No  sun 
warmed  my  roof -tree"  he  said  to  Clodd;  "the  marriage 
was  a  blunder;  she  was  nine  years  my  senior";  and  after 
a  few  years  they  separated.  After  his  marriage  to  Marie 
Vulliamy  in  1864,  he  Uved  for  a  while  at  Mickleham, 
near  Dorking,  Surrey,  and  a  few  years  later  settled  down 
for  the  rest  of  his  life  at  Box  Hill  in  the  same  neighbour- 
hood. Except  for  an  occasional  visit  to  the  Continent, 
his  whole  life  was  spent  in  the  South  of  England,  between 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  19 

Portsmouth  and  London.  He  is  as  much  the  poet  of 
this  district  as  Wordsworth  is  of  the  Northern  lakes. 
It  is  a  rolUng,  well-wooded  country,  and  its  character- 
istic contour,  its  prevailing  winds,  its  trees,  flowers,  and 
birds  make  the  natural  background  of  Meredith's  poems. 
It  was  as  a  novelist  that  Meredith  first  gained  any 
wide  recognition,  and  his  success  in  intellectualising  the 
novel  had  far-reaching  influence,  but  he  considered  him- 
self primarily  a  poet,  and  it  is  to  the  poems  and  letters 
that  we  must  look  for  the  more  direct  statement  of  his 
beliefs.  If  we  may  judge  from  a  letter  written  when  he 
was  sixteen,  he  passed  through  a  phase  of  youthful  piety, 
due,  no  doubt,  to  the  atmosphere  of  the  school  at  Neu- 
wied.  Of  the  English  church  services  he  attended  per- 
force in  his  boyhood,  the  abiding  impression  he  retained 
was  one  of  intense  boredom 

"'Corinthians'  will  forever  be  associated  in  my  mind  with  rows  of 
wax  candles  and  a  holy  drone  overhead,  combined  with  the  sensation 
that  those  who  did  not  choose  the  road  to  Heaven,  enjoyed  by  far 
the  pleasantest  way.  I  cannot  hear  of  Genesis,  or  of  the  sins  of  amo- 
rous David,  or  of  Hezekiah,  without  fidgetting  in  my  chair,  as  if  it 
had  turned  to  the  utterly  unsympathetic  Church-wood  of  yore.  In 
despair,  I  used  to  begin  a  fresh  chapter  of  the  adventm-es  of  St. 
George  (a  serial  story,  continued  from  Sunday  to  Sunday),  and  carry 
it  on  till  the  preacher's  voice  fell.  Sometimes  he  deceived  me  (I  hope, 
not  voluntarily)  and  his  voice  bade  St.  George  go  back  into  his  box, 
and  then  ascended  in  renewed  vigour  once  more;  leaving  me  vacant 
of  my  comforting  hero;  who  was  not  to  be  revived,  after  such, treat- 
ment. I  have  known  subsequent  hours  of  ennui:  but  nothing  to  be 
compared  with  those  early  ones." 

Except  under  special  provocation,  however,  his  atti- 
tude towards  the  clergy  was  not  aggressive.  In  a  letter 
in  which  he  warns  his  friend  Maxse  against  objectless 


20  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

and  unseasonable  protests,  he  makes  in  1865  an  inter- 
esting forecast  of  the  situation  during  the  coming  years: 

"What  we  have  to  anticipate  is  this:  there  is,  and  will  further  be, 
a  falling  off  of  the  educated  young  men  in  seeking  an  establishment 
as  Churchmen.  These  are  highly  educated,  and  in  their  nature 
tolerant.  They  are  beginning  to  think  for  themselves,  and  they 
give  their  lives  to  other  matters.  The  Church  will  have  to  be 
recruited  from  a  lower,  a  more  illiterate,  necessarily  a  more  intolerant 
class.  These  will  find  themselves  at  variance  with  their  intellectual 
superiors,  and  in  self-defence  will  attempt  to  wield  the  Dogma  and 
knock  us  down  with  a  club.  In  about  twenty  years'  time  we  may 
expect  a  conflict  to  come.  If  in  the  meantime  we  alarm  such  placid 
fellows  as  we  see  in  the  clerical  robes,  we  are  really  doing  Truth  no 
service.   .   .   . 

"When  the  Ministers  of  Religion  press  on  for  an  open  rupture  by 
attempts  at  persecution,  it  wiU  be  time  to  take  rank  under  colours: 
until  when  I  hold  myself  in  reserve.  I  don't  want  the  day  to  be 
advanced.  I  think  you  altogether  too  impetuous:  500  years  too 
fast  for  the  human  race:  I  think  that  where  the  Christian  Ministers 
are  guilty  of  little  more  than  boredom,  you  have  got  them  in  a  state 
of  perfection,  and  at  least  owe  them  your  tolerance  for  theirs: — And 
so  I  shall  continue  to  think  until  next  I  go  to  Church." 

Ten  years  later,  however  (1874),  he  was  stirred  by  the 
protests  of  the  clergy  against  Tyndall's  Belfast  address 
to  write  to  Maxse:  "The  man  or  the  country  that  fights 
priestcraft  and  priests  is  to  my  mind  striking  deeper  for 
freedom  that  can  be  struck  anywhere  at  present.  I  fore- 
see a  perilous  struggle  with  them."  But  he  still  held 
Christian  teaching  ''sound  and  good,"  and  objected  only 
to  "ecclesiastical  dogma,"  just  as  he  had  written  a 
decade  before  to  Maxse:  "You  must  bear  in  mind  that 
Christianity  will  always  be  one  of  the  great  chapters  in 
the  History  of  Humanity:  that  it  fought  down  brutish- 
ness:  that  it  has  been  the  mother  of  our  civihzation: 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  21 

that  it  is  tender  to  the  poor,  maternal  to  the  suffering, 
and  has  suppKed  for  most,  still  suppHes  for  many,  nour- 
ishment that  in  a  certain  state  of  the  intelligence  is 
instinctively  demanded." 

No  reUgious  difficulties  interfered  with  Meredith's 
frank  acceptance  of  the  theory  of  evolution.  It  became 
indeed  his  main  source  of  inspiration  and  the  base  of  his 
thought.  But  he  combined  with  it  a  transcendental 
view  of  Nature  and  an  idealistic  Theism  derived  from 
his  great  predecessors.  In  'The  Woods  of  Westermain' 
he  elaborates  with  sustained  eloquence  and  passion  the 
doctrine  that  Ruskin  received  from  Wordsworth,  to  "go 
to  Nature  in  all  singleness  of  heart,  and  walk  with  her 
laboriously  and  trustingly,  having  no  other  thoughts 
but  how  best  to  penetrate  her  meaning  and  remember 
her  instruction,  rejecting  nothing,  selecting  nothing,  and 
scorning  nothing,  and  rejoicing  always  in  the  truth." 
But  the  teaching  of  the  "vernal  woods"  of  Wordsworth 
was  not  in  itself  sufficient  for  Meredith;  inspiration  and 
enlightenment  must  be  sought  also  from  human  society, 
not  only  in  its  present  phase  but  in  the  course  of  its 
development,  if  we  would  know  'Earth's  Secret': — 

"  Not  solitarily  in  fields  we  find 
Earth's  secret  open,  though  one  page  is  there; 
Her  plainest,  such  as  children  spell,  and  share 
With  bird  and  beast;  raised  letters  for  the  blind. 
Not  where  the  troubled  passions  toss  the  mind, 
In  turbid  cities,  can  the  key  be  bare. 
It  hangs  for  those  who  hither,  thither  fare, 
Close  interthreading  nature  with  our  kind. 
They,  hearing  History  speak,  of  what  men  were, 
And  have  become,  are  wise.    The  gain  is  great 
In  vision  and  solidity;  it  lives. 


22  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Yet  at  a  thought  of  Ufe  apart  from  her, 

SoHdity  and  vision  lose  their  state, 

For  earth,  that  gives  the  milk,  the  spirit  gives." 

Evolution,  however,  is  regarded  by  Meredith  not  as  a 
mechanical  process  dependent  on  the  properties  of 
matter,  but  as  a  scheme  of  progress  conducted  in  accord- 
ance with  inherent  principles.  Men  are  indeed  descended 
from  the  lower  animals,  and  have  evolved  first  moraUty, 
then  reason.  "Convenience  pricked  conscience,  that 
the  mind."  If  they  stray  from  the  onward  path,  they 
are  doomed  to  disappear.  "Earth  gives  the  edifice  they 
build  no  base." 

The  fullest  exposition  of  Meredith's  philosophy  is  to 
be  found  in  the  series  of  poems  to  which  he  gave  the 
title,  'A  Reading  of  Life.'  He  was  at  one  with  the 
earlier  Victorians  in  his  stout  insistence  on  traditional 
morality,  exemplifying  herein  a  profound  observation  of 
Ibsen's  that  the  different  spiritual  functions  do  not 
develop  evenly  and  side  by  side;  the  intellect  hastens  on 
from  conquest  to  conquest;  the  moral  consciousness,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  very  conservative.  Meredith  found  the 
solution  of  the  problem  of  conduct  in  the  control  by 
humanity  of  the  two  contending  forces  of  sensuous 
pleasure  (typified  by  Aphrodite,  "the  Persuader")  and 
asceticism  (Artemis,  "the  Huntress").  If  man  shuns 
or  too  devoutly  follows  either,  he  is  doomed  to  destruction. 

"His  task  to  hold  them  both  in  breast,  and  yield 
Their  dues  to  each,  and  of  their  war  be  field." 

But  the  problem  cannot  be  worked  out  in  isolation, 
not  even  by  aspiration  to  a  higher  power,  for  the  assump- 
tion of  divine  favour  slays  the  soul  of  brotherhood. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  23 

"In  fellowship  religion  has  its  founts: 
The  solitary  his  own  God  reveres : 
Ascend  no  sacred  Mounts 
Our  hungers  or  our  fears. 
As  only  for  the  numbers  Nature's  care 
Is  shown,  and  she  the  personal  nothing  heeds, 
So  to  Divinity  the  spring  of  prayer 
From  brotherhood  the  one  way  upward  leads." 

Man's  fear  of  spectral  enemies,  which  were  but  the 
reflex  shade  of  his  own  mind,  and  his  attitude  of  distrust 
and  antagonism  toward  his  fellows  had  to  be  overcome 
before  the  material  world  had  for  him  any  spiritual 
significance.  It  is  only  when  the  human  mind  has  gained 
the  conception  of  brotherhood,  which  turns  the  world 
from  a  warring  camp  into  a  fruitful  garden,  that  it  is 
able  to  discern  God,  "the  Master  Mind,  the  Great 
Unseen,  no  wise  the  Dark  Unknown."  So,  fully  devel- 
oped man  comes  to  be  regarded  by  Meredith  as  Nature's 
(or,  as  he  more  often  says,  "Earth's")  comrade  and  helper, 
rather  than  her  subject  or  a  subordinate  part  of  her 
kingdom,  though  he  must  ever  keep  in  close  contact  with 
her  if  he  is  to  succeed  in  "the  scheme  to  animate  his 
race"  revealed  by  a  study  of  the  past: 

"No  miracle  the  sprout  of  wheat  from  clod, 
She  knows,  nor  growth  of  man  in  grisly  brute; 
But  he,  the  flower  at  head  and  soil  at  root, 
Is  miracle,  guides  he  the  brute  to  God. 
And  that  way  seems  he  bound;  that  way  the  road, 
With  his  dark-lantern  mind,  unled,  alone, 
WearifuUy  through  forest-tracks  unsown. 
He  travels,  urged  by  some  internal  goad." 

Resting  upon  the  revelation  of  the  past  by  historical 
and  scientific  investigation  as  affording  sufl&cient  hope 


24  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

and  guidance  for  the  future,  Meredith,  like  Huxley, 
George  Eliot,  and  the  other  leaders  of  the  new  movement, 
found  no  need  in  his  philosophy  for  a  belief  in  personal 
immortality  and  saw  no  evidence  to  support  such  a 
belief.     To  the  question  asked  by  Tennyson: 

"The  wages  of  sin  is  Death:  if  the  wages  of  Virtue  be  dust, 
Would  she  have  heart  to  endure  for  the  life  of  the  worm  and  the 
fly?" 

Meredith  answered: 

"Spirit  raves  not  for  a  goal. 
Shapes  in  man's  likeness  hewn, 
Desires  not;  neither  desires 
The  sleep  or  the  glory;  it  trusts." 

In  '  A  Faith  on  Trial, '  the  fine  poem  from  which  these 
lines  are  quoted,  Meredith  faced  the  question  of  mor- 
tality in  the  emotional  crisis  which  assailed  him  when  his 
beloved  Marie  VulHamy  lay  on  her  death-bed — 

"She,  my  own. 
My  good  companion,  mate, 
Pulse  of  me." 

In  his  distress  he  sought  from  Earth  an  assurance  of 
a  life  beyond: 

"I  caught, 
With  Death  in  me  shrinking  from  Death, 
As  cold  from  cold,  for  a  sign 
Of  the  life  beyond  ashes :  I  cast, 
Believing  the  vision  divine. 
Wings  of  that  dream  of  my  Youth 
To  the  spirit  beloved :  'twas  unglassed 
On  her  breast,  in  her  depths  austere: 
A  flash  through  the  mist,  mere  breath. 
Breath  on  a  buckler  of  steel.   .   .   . 

Not  she  gives  the  tear  for  the  tear: 
Harsh  wisdom  gives  Earth,  no  more." 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  25 

The  religious  legends  of  the  past  are  "good  ships  of 
morality"  for  a  partially  developed  age,  but  Nature 
doles  barren  comfort  to  "the  Questions,  the  broods  that 
haunt  Sensation  insurgent;"  they  are  the  cry  not  of 
faith,  but  of  unfaith — 

"These  are  our  sensual  dreams; 
Of  the  yearning  to  touch,  to  feel 
The  dark  Impalpable  sure, 
And  have  the  Unveiled  appear." 

The  vital  truth  is 

"That  from  flesh  unto  spirit  man  grows 
Even  here  on  the  sod  under  sun." 

Reason,  "tiptoe  at  the  ultimate  bound  of  her  wit," 
may  find 

"  The  great  Over-Reason  we  name 
Beneficence:  mind  seeking  Mind." 

Thus  the  human  intellect  discerns  God  through  His 
handmaiden,  Earth.  The  same  conclusion  is  reached 
in  another  beautiful  but  difficult  poem,  'The  Hymn  to 
Colour':—- 

"This  way  have  men  come  out  of  brutishness 
To  spell  the  letters  of  the  sky  and  read 
A  reflex  upon  earth  else  meaningless. 
With  thee,  O  fount  of  the  Untimed!  to  lead; 
Drink  they  of  thee,  thee  eyeing,  they  unaged 
Shall  on  through  brave  wars  waged. 

More  gardens  will  they  win  than  any  lost; 
The  vile  plucked  out  of  them,  the  unlovely  slain. 
Not  forfeiting  the  beast  with  which  they  are  crossed. 
To  stature  of  the  Gods  will  they  attain. 
They  shall  uplift  their  Earth  to  meet  her  Lord, 
Themselves  the  attuning  chord!" 


26  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Applied  to  the  political  sphere,  Meredith's  confidence 
in  the  power  of  man  to  work  out  his  own  destiny  made 
him  an  ardent  democrat  and  apostle  of  Uberty.  Of  the 
early  Roadside  Sketches  contributed  to  'Once  a  Week' 
he  speaks  too  sHghtingly  when  he  describes  them  as 
"flints  perhaps  and  not  flowers,"  for  they  show  genuine 
sympathy  with  humble  hfe  and  real  humour;  but  his 
most  serious  poUtical  tract  in  verse — *  The  Empty  Purse ' 
hardly  deserves  a  more  exalted  description — is  flinty 
enough.  The  subtitle  reads  'A  Sermon  to  our  later 
Prodigal  Son,'  but  one  doubts  what  the  later  prodigal 
would  make  of  it,  if  it  ever  reached  his  eyes  or  ears.  He 
is  given  wholesome  counsel — to  follow  Moderation  and 
Harmony,  not  to  depend  on  wealth  or  privilege — but 
what  will  be  conveyed  to  him  by  such  a  promise  as  this? — 

"Then  thou  with  thy  furies  outgrown, 
Not  as  Cybele's  beast  will  thy  head  lash  tail 
So  praeter-determinedly  thermonous, 

Nor  thy  cause  be  an  Attis  far  fled." 

Meredith  said  that  the  things  he  was  always  trying 
for  in  poetry  were  "concentration  and  suggestion,"  and 
concentration  is  sometimes  overdone,  especially  where 
there  is  no  sweep  of  feeUng  to  help  the  reader  onward. 
It  is  precisely  when  "strong  human  emotion  is  not  upon 
him,"  that  Meredith  indulges  in  what  he  calls  "a  turn 
for  literary  playfulness."  He  admits  that  "there  is  too 
much  of  it,"  and  the  admission  disarms  criticism,  though 
one  cannot  help  regretting  that  the  poet  put  these  ob- 
stacles in  the  way  of  many  who  were  eager  to  receive 
what  he  had  to  give.  He  could  plead  tunefully  enough 
the  cause  of  Italy  or  Ireland,  and  he  made  a  gallant 
effort  to  convince  the  United  States  that  the  official  voice 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  27 

of  England  during  the  Civil  War  was  not  the  real  voice 
of  the  nation  ('Lines  to  a  Friend  visiting  America')- 
But  his  noblest  utterance  on  international  issues  was  his 
expression  of  enlightened  sympathy  with  France  in  the 
hour  of  her  deepest  humiliation  (December,  1870) — a 
message  of  hope  and  courage,  which  was  translated  for 
La  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  and  bore  eloquent  testimony 
to  his  faith  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  tortured 
Prometheus  among  nations. 

Meredith  said  at  that  time:  "I  am  neither  German  nor 
French,  nor,  unless  the  nation  is  attacked,  English.  I 
am  European  and  cosmopolitan — for  humanity!  The 
nation  which  shows  most  worth  is  the  nation  I  love  and 
reverence."  At  heart  he  was,  however,  intensely  patri- 
otic, and  even  miUtantly  so.  As  early  as  1878,  he  wrote 
to  Sir  William  Hardman  of  the  'Morning  Post':  "Press 
for  an  army.  Ultimately  it  will  come  to  a  conscription, 
and  the  sooner  the  better."  Thirty  years  later  he  was 
still  of  the  same  opinion,  writing  to  a  young  French  man 
of  letters,  M.  Rene  Galland,  then  doing  his  mihtary 
service:  "I  wish  this  duty  to  the  country  were  the  same 
over  here  with  our  young  men."  He  considered  the 
German  menace  pressing,  and  wrote  '  The  Call '  within  a 
few  months  of  his  death: — 

"It  cannot  be  declared  we  are 

A  nation  till  from  end  to  end 
The  land  can  show  such  front  to  war 

As  bids  a  crouching  foe  expend 
His  ire  in  air,  and  preferably  be  friend. 

The  grandeur  of  her  deeds  recall; 

Look  on  her  face  so  kindly  fair: 
This  Britain!  and  were  she  to  fall, 

Mankind  would  breathe  a  harsher  air, 
The  nations  miss  a  light  of  leading  rare." 


28  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

His  imperialism,  if  such  it  may  be  called — he  was  aston- 
ished, at  the  spectacle  of  Enghshmen's  ''hugging  of 
their  India,  which  they  are  ruining  for  the  sake  of  giving 
a  lucrative  post  to  younger  sons  of  their  middle  class" — 
was  an  imperiahsm  based  on  freedom. 

"Australian,  Canadian, 
To  tone  old  veins  with  streams  of  youth, 
Our  trust  be  on  the  best  in  man 
Henceforth,  and  we  shall  prove  that  truth. 
Prove  to  a  world  of  brows  down-bent 
That  in  the  Britain  thus  endowed, 
Imperial  means  beneficent, 

And  strength  to  service  vowed." 

It  was  inevitable  that  a  writer  of  independent  mind, 
possessed  with  the  idea  of  progress  and  resentful  of 
injustice,  should  interest  himself  in  the  position  of 
women.  "Since  I  began  to  reflect,"  he  says,  "I  have 
been  oppressed  by  the  injustice  done  to  women,  the 
constraint  put  upon  their  natural  aptitudes  and  their 
faculties,  generally  much  to  the  degradation  of  the  race. 
I  have  not  studied  them  more  closely  than  I  have  men, 
but  with  more  affection,  a  deeper  interest  in  their  en- 
franchisement and  development,  being  assured  that 
women  of  the  independent  mind  are  needed  for  any 
sensible  degree  of  progress.  They  will  so  educate  their 
daughters,  that  these  will  not  be  instructed  at  the  start 
to  think  themselves  naturally  inferior  to  men,  because 
less  muscular,  and  need  not  have  recourse  to  particular 
arts,  fehne  chiefly,  to  make  their  way  in  the  world." 

There  is  no  subject  to  which  Meredith  gave  more 
attention  in  his  writing,  and  his  treatment  of  it,  especially 
in  his  novels,  had  a  marked  effect  on  pubhc  opinion. 
As  will  be  noticed  in  the  passage  above  quoted,  he  rightly 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  29 

insisted  first  of  all  on  educational  opportunity  with  a 
view  to  economic  independence.  Later  he  declared 
himself  in  favour  of  the  suffrage,  though  he  condemned 
the  violent  manifestations  of  the  suffragettes — "They 
want  the  incompatible — Martyrdom  with  Comfort," 
he  says  in  one  letter,  and  in  another  he  bids  women 
"Never  forget  good  manners."  Probably  his  most 
influential  treatment  of  the  subject  was  'Diana  of  the 
Crossways, '  which  attained  considerable  popularity, 
doubtless  on  account  of  its  somewhat  melodramatic, 
plot.  The  particular  incident  on  which  the  story  turned 
was  proved  to  have  no  historical  foundation,  and  it 
created  difficulties  in  the  handling  of  plot  and  character 
which  Meredith,  in  spite  of  all  his  efforts,  cannot  be  said 
to  have  overcome.  When  all  allowances  are  made  for 
Diana,  her  selling  of  her  lover's  secret  appears  inconsistent 
with  her  intelUgence,  her  absolute  integrity,  and  her 
knowledge  of  the  world.  But  what  attracted  Meredith 
to  the  theme  was  not  the  supposed  betrayal  of  the  Corn 
Law  secret  by  Mrs.  Norton,  who  suggested  to  him  the 
character  of  his  heroine,  but  her  position  in  other  rela- 
tions of  life.  Mrs.  Norton  was  a  conspicuous  victim  of 
the  unjust  marriage  and  divorce  laws  and  still  more  of 
the  conventional  ideas  by  which  they  were  supported, 
and  she  had  made  a  gallant  fight  to  earn  her  living  by  her 
pen.     Diana  says — 

"  That  IS  the  secret  of  the  opinion  of  us  at  present — our  dependency. 
Give  us  the  means  of  independence,  and  we  will  gain  it,  and  have  a 
turn  at  judging  you,  my  lords!  You  shall  behold  a  world  reversed. 
Whenever  I  am  distracted  by  existing  circumstances,  I  lay  my  finger 
on  the  material  conditions,  and  I  touch  the  secret.  Individually,  it 
may  be  moral  with  us;  collectively,  it  is  material — gross  wrongs, 
gross  himgers.  I  am  a  married  rebel,  and  thereof  comes  the  social 
rebel." 


30  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Meredith  was  too  much  of  an  artist  to  set  out  to  write 
a  novel  to  illustrate  any  particular  principle.  He  be- 
lieved that  the  novel  should  be  "fortified  by  philosophy." 
"Close  knowledge  of  our  fellows,  discernment  of  the  laws 
of  existence,  these  lead  to  great  civiUzation.  I  have  sup- 
posed that  the  novel,  exposing  and  illustrating  the  natural 
history  of  man,  may  help  us  to  such  sustaining  roadside 
gifts."  But  he  "never  started  on  a  novel  to  pursue 
the  theory  it  developed."  "The  dominant  idea  in  my 
mind  took  up  the  characters  and  the  story  midway." 

It  is  in  the  drawing  of  characters,  especially  of  women, 
that  he  excelled.  Diana's  personahty  is  worth  much 
more  than  all  her  clever  sayings  and  all  the  wise  reflec- 
tions on  the  part  of  the  author  for  which  her  adventures 
give  occasion.  These  may  gain  approval  or  excite 
admiration,  but  it  is  Diana  herself  who  wins  our  sym- 
pathy. Meredith's  array  of  heroines,  endowed  with 
intelligence  as  well  as  passion,  is  the  greatest  tribute  to 
EngHsh  womanhood  since  the  time  of  Shakespeare,  and 
it  is  also  Meredith's  greatest  service  to  literature.  It 
enlarged  the  common  vision  of  what  women  might  be 
and  do,  if  opportunity  were  granted  them,  and  was  a 
potent  factor  in  the  Hberating  movement  that  followed. 

The  position  of  woman  is  an  element  in  'Modern 
Love' — a  short  story  told  somewhat  obscurely  in  "tragic 
hints"  but  including  poems  of  remarkable  beauty — and 
it  forms  the  main  theme  of  'The  Sage  Enamoured  and 
the  Honest  Lady,'  and '  A  Ballad  of  Fair  Ladies  in  Revolt,' 
both  carried  through  with  high  spirits  and  great  intel- 
lectual versatility;  but  these  poems  failed  to  win  favour 
except  with  the  elect.  The  later  novels  had  a  better 
chance  after  'Diana'  had  opened  the  way  to  a  larger 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  31 

public,  and  they  secured  a  fair  share  of  attention  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  'The  Amazing  Marriage,' 
'Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta,'  and  'One  of  our  Con- 
querors' all  enlist  our  sympathies  for  women  who  are 
the  victims  of  conventional  opinions  about  marriage 
and  of  tyranny  or  lack  of  consideration  on  the  part  of 
their  lords  for  which  the  social  situation  gives  occasion. 
Aminta  breaks  her  way  out  of  a  bad  marriage  by  elope- 
ment and  is  justified  of  her  creator.  The  lovable  Nesta 
of  'One  of  our  Conquerors'  fights  in  vain  against  the 
irregularity  of  her  position  and  has  to  own  herself  van- 
quished. Indeed  the  latter  novel  might  be  interpreted 
as  a  warning  to  those  who  are  inclined  to  run  counter  to 
social  traditions  that  they  would  do  well  to  count  the 
cost  before  they  venture  on  the  experiment.  Meredith's 
attitude  on  the  marriage  question  was  by  no  means  so 
revolutionary  as  the  public  were  led  to  believe  by  the 
prominence  given  to  a  newspaper  interview,  in  which 
he  made  a  passing  allusion  to  supposed  experimental  or 
"trial  marriages"  in  America  ('Daily  Mail,'  Sept.  24, 
1904).  "All  I  have  suggested,"  he  wrote  later,  "is 
for  the  matter  to  be  discussed,"  and  so  far  as  his  dis- 
cussion of  it  went  in  the  novels  and  in  the  poems,  the 
conservatives  of  to-day  would  hardly  find  anything  to 
object  to.  He  suggests  the  advisability  of  release  for 
ill-mated  couples  without  incurring  social  disqualifica- 
tion, and  of  the  pardon  of  faults  for  women  as  for  men, 
but  his  ideal  of  marriage  is  high,  and  in  his  condemna- 
tion of  self-indulgence  he  leans  rather  to  the  Puritan 
than  the  Epicurean. 

"Sin  against  immaturity,  the  sin 
Of  ravenous  excess,  what  deed  divides 


32  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Man  from  vitality;  these  bleed  within; 
Bleed  in  the  crippled  relic  that  abides. 
Perpetually  they  bleed;  a  limb  is  lost, 
A  piece  of  life,  the  very  spirit  maimed." 

Fundamentally  marriage  must  be  based  upon  Nature's 
Law,  but  it  must  also  take  into  account  the  higher 
faculties  of  man,  and  be  a  real  mating  of  the  spirit. 

Meredith  was  much  more  than  a  feminist,  though  dur- 
ing a  large  part  of  his  career  the  woman  question  was 
very  much  to  the  front,  and  he  helped  to  put  it  there. 
In  'The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel'  and  again  in  'The 
Adventures  of  Harry  Richmond'  he  deals  with  the  sub- 
ject of  education,  and  he  had  a  talent  for  the  creation 
of  charming  youths.  'Beauchamp's  Career'  is  a  polit- 
ical novel  suggested  by  the  unsuccessful  candidacy 
of  his  friend  Maxse  for  Southampton,  but  in  this,  as  in 
all  his  novels,  it  is  the  study  of  character  that  is  of 
importance  rather  than  the  elucidation  of  any  general 
principle.  His  greatest  achievement  in  psychological 
analysis  is  doubtless  'The  Egoist,'  in  which  the  central 
masterpiece  is  matched  by  subordinate  men  and  women 
characters,  admirably  drawn,  including  one  unforget- 
able  boy, 

Meredith's  finest  characters  are  mainly  taken  from 
the  leisured  classes,  the  world  which  has  time  to  think 
and  discuss,  and  which  has  enough  cultivation  to  be 
interested  in  self -analysis  and  the  art  of  conversation. 
Occasionally  he  gives  us  a  glimpse  into  the  busier  world 
of  pontics  or  commerce,  but  when  he  goes  below  the 
middle  class  his  dehneation  inchnes  to  caricature.  Sub- 
ject to  this  qualification — and  the  humorous  treatment 
of  such  characters  as  Mrs.  Berry  in  'Feverel,'  Danvers  in 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  33 

'Diana/  and  Skepsey  in  'One  of  our  Conquerors'  is  in 
itself  a  delight — his  range  is  wide  and  his  sympathies 
all  embracing.  No  novelist  of  or  since  his  time  has  come 
anywhere  near  him  in  variety  and  distinctness  of  char- 
acterization. His  women,  above  all,  feel  and  think  and 
live;  and  they  belong  to  the  modern  world  he  helped  to 
create,  while  characters  in  previous  fiction  always  give 
the  impression  of  belonging  to  a  past  more  or  less  re- 
moved. 

Meredith's  novels  aimed  at  a  criticism  of  life,  but  a 
criticism  conceived  in  the  spirit  of  comedy.  He  met  to 
the  full  Matthew  Arnold's  demand  for  high  seriousness, 
but  it  could  not  be  said  of  him  that 

"He  took  the  suffering  human  race, 

He  read  each  wound,  each  weakness  clear; 
And  struck  his  finger  on  the  place, 
And  said:  'Thou  ailest  here,  and  here!'" 

Meredith's  conception  of  his  task  as  a  critic  of  society 
and  of  the  method  to  be  employed  was  entirely  different. 
"People  are  ready  to  surrender  themselves  to  witty 
thumps  on  the  back,  breast  and  sides;  all  except  the 
head:  and  it  is  there  that  he  aims.  He  must  be  subtle 
to  penetrate."  It  is  for  this  reason  that  in  'An  Essay  on 
Comedy'  he  appealed  to  cultivated  women  to  recog- 
nize the  Comic  Muse  as  one  of  their  best  friends.  "  They 
are  blind  to  their  interests  in  swelling  the  ranks  of  the 
sentimentalists.  Let  them  look  with  their  clearest 
vision  abroad  and  at  home.  They  will  see  that  where 
they  have  no  social  freedom,  Comedy  is  absent:  where 
they  are  household  drudges,  the  form  of  Comedy  is 
primitive:  where  they  are  tolerably  independent,  but 
uncultivated,  exciting  melodrama  takes  its  place  and  a 


34  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

sentimental  version  of  them,  .  .  .  But  where  women 
are  on  the  road  to  an  equal  footing  with  men,  in  attain- 
ments and  in  liberty — in  what  they  have  won  for  them- 
selves, and  what  has  been  granted  them  by  a  fair  civil- 
ization— there,  and  only  waiting  to  be  transplanted  from 
life  to  the  stage,  or  the  novel,  or  the  poem,  pure  Comedy 
flourishes,  and  is,  as  it  would  help  them  to  be,  the  sweet- 
est of  diversions,  the  wisest  of  delightful  companions." 

It  was  in  this  spirit  and  with  these  weapons  that  he 
attacked,  in  men  and  women  alike,  sentimentalism, 
which  he  defines  as  "ignoble  passion  playing  with  fire." 
For  passion,  "noble  strength  on  fire,"  he  evokes  our 
sympathy,  and  for  courage  and  devotion.  Above  all 
he  pleads  for  the  use  of  intelHgence,  of  human  reason : 

"Sword  of  Common  Sense! — 
Our  surest  gift;  the  sacred  chain 
Of  man  to  man." 

He  sought  in  his  novels,  as  he  does  in  the  '  Ode  to  the 
Comic  Spirit'  from  which  the  above  Unes  are  quoted,  to 
make  the  relations  between  men  and  women  more  rational 
and  more  spiritual: 

"More  brain,  O  Lord,  more  brain!  or  we  shall  mar 
Utterly  this  fair  garden  we  might  win." 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  he  made  egotism  in  its  myriad 
forms  the  object  of  his  shafts  of  wit,  and  the  following 
passage  in  'An  Essay  on  Comedy,'  though  intended  as 
an  exposition  of  the  Comic  Spirit,  is  an  excellent  survey 
of  his  own  accompHshment : — 

"Whenever  men  wax  out  of  proportion,  overblown,  affected,  pre- 
tentious, bombastical,  hypocritical,  pedantic,  fantastically  delicate; 
whenever  it  sees  them  self-deceived  or  hoodwinked,  given  to  run 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  35 

riot  in  idolatries,  drifting  into  vanities,  congregating  in  absurdities, 
planning  shortsightedly,  plotting  dementedly;  whenever  they  are  at 
variance  with  their  professions,  and  violate  the  unwritten  but  per- 
ceptible laws  binding  them  in  consideration  one  to  another;  whenever 
they  offend  sound  reason,  fair  justice;  are  false  in  humility  or  mined 
with  conceit,  individually,  or  in  the  bulk — the  Spirit  overhead  will 
look  humanely  malign  and  cast  an  oblique  light  on  them,  followed  by 
volleys  of  silvery  laughter." 

For  the  enthusiasms  of  youth  he  had  keen  sympathy. 
"All  right  use  of  life,  and  the  one  secret  of  life,  is  to  pave 
ways  for  the  firmer  footing  of  those  who  succeed  us"; 
and  he  thought  his  works  of  worth  "only  when  they 
point  and  aid  to  that  end."  He  expresses  the  same 
thought  more  eloquently  in  'Youth  in  Memory': 

"But  love  we  well  the  young,  her  road  midway 
The  darknesses  runs  consecrated  clay. 
Despite  our  feeble  hold  on  this  green  home, 
And  the  vast  outer  strangeness  void  of  dome, 
Shall  we  be  with  them,  of  them,  taught  to  feel, 
Up  to  the  moment  of  our  prostrate  fall. 
The  life  they  deem  voluptuously  real 
Is  more  than  empty  echo  of  a  call, 
Or  shadow  of  a  shade,  or  swing  of  tides; 
As  brooding  upon  age,  when  veins  congeal, 
Grey  palsy  nods  to  think.     With  us  for  guides, 
Another  step  above  the  animal. 
To  views  in  Alpine  thought  are  they  helped  on. 
Good  if  so  far  we  live  in  them  when  gone!" 

Without  ever  imagining  himself  a  hero,  Meredith 
fought  a  gallant  battle  against  ill  health,  straitened 
circumstances,  and  persistent  lack  of  appreciation  on  the 
part  of  his  contemporaries.  Fame  came  to  him  too  late 
in  life  to  remedy  his  sense  of  isolation  and  failure.  This 
resulted  in  the  cultivation  of  a  habit  of  intellectual 


36  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

vagary  which  is  sometimes  disconcerting  and  is  the  more 
irritating  when  one  reaUzes  that  he  can  write  nobly  and 
straightforwardly  when  he  is  intent  on  his  main  purpose. 
He  protested  against  this  literary  playfulness  being 
called  his  style,  and  it  is  certainly  not  always  character- 
istic of  him.  He  has  many  passages,  both  of  poetry  and 
prose,  of  an  admirable  simpUcity.  His  extraordinary 
intellectual  energy  led  him  to  overestimate  the  general 
intelligence  to  begin  with,  and  in  the  end  to  resent  the 
general  stupidity.  But  he  succeeded,  at  any  rate  for 
the  generation  that  followed,  to  a  far  greater  degree  than 
he  seemed  to  reaUze.  He  continued,  both  in  poetry  and 
fiction,  the  intellectual  tradition  which  had  been  estab- 
Ushed  by  Browning  and  George  Eliot,  and  he  avoided 
some  of  their  errors,  lacked  some  of  their  shortcomings. 
He  is  never  heavy-handed,  arrogant,  or  dull.  In  prose 
and  verse  aUke  he  was  a  cunning  craftsman,  seeking  ever 
to  renew  the  Ufe  of  our  much-travailed  English  tongue  in 
word,  phrase,  and  metre.  Some  of  his  metrical  experi- 
ments are  more  curious  than  successful,  but  it  was  more 
than  a  tour  de  force  that  changed  the  jinghng  nursery 
measure  of  'Sing  a  Song  of  Sixpence'  into  the  richly 
flowing  music  of  'Love  in  the  Valley.'  In  both  matter 
and  form  he  made  notable  additions  to  our  Hterary 
treasure,  and  some  of  the  younger  men  who  were  inspired 
by  his  example  found  among  their  contemporaries  a 
sympathy  both  for  ideas  and  for  their  effective  expres- 
sion which  he  sought  in  vain  from  the  public  of  his  prime. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  ^     37 


/y 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
PRINCIPAL  PROSE  WORKS 


'The  Shaving  of  Shagpat.' 

'Farina.'     .        . 

'The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel.' 

'Evan  Harrington'  ('Once  a  Week,'  1860). 

'Emilia  in  England'  (later  called  'Sandra  Belloni'). 

'Rhoda  Fleming.' 

'Vittoria'  ('Fortnightly  Review,'  1866) 

'The  Adventures  of  Harry  Richmond'  ('Cornhill,'  1870-1). 

'Beau champ's  Career'  ('Fortnightly  Review,'  1874-5). 

'Essay  on  Comedy'  ('New  Quarterly  Mag.,'  1877). 

'The  Egoist.' 

'The  Tragic  Comedians'  ('Fortnightly,'  1880-1). 

'Diana  of  the  Crossways'  ('Fortnightly,'  1884). 

'One  of  Our  Conquerors'  ('Fortnightly,'  'N.  Y.  Sun,'  'Aus- 
tralasian,' 1890) 
1894     'Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta.' 
*^  1895    'The  Amazing  Marriage'  ('Scribner,'  1895). 
^'  1910    'Celt  and  Saxon'  ('Fortnightly,'  1910). 
y^    1910     'The  Sentimentalists' (unfinished  Comedy, 'Scribner,' Aug.). 

POLITICAL  PAPERS  AND  INTERVIEWS 

*A  Pause  in  the  Strife,'  'Pall  Mall  Gazette,'  July  9,  1886. 
'Concessions  to  the  Celt,'  'Fortnightly  Review,'  October,  1886. 
'  Letter  to  the  Working  Women's  Assn.,'  '  Daily  News,'  May  20, 1904. 
'George  Meredith's  Views,'  'Daily  Chronicle,'  July  5, 1904, 
'The  Marriage  Handicap,'  'Daily  Mail,'  Sept.  24,  1904. 
'Interviews on  the  Revolution  in  Russia,'  'Daily  Chronicle,'  Jan.  27, 

and  'Westminster  Gazette,'  Feb.  9,  1905. 
'The  Chiu-ch  in  Wales,'  'Westminster  Gazette,'  Oct.  14  and  'Times,' 

Oct.  24,  1905. 
'Letters  on  General  Election  of  1906,'  'Times,'  Jan.  12,  20. 
'The  Suffrage  for  Women,'  'Times,'  Nov.  1,  1906. 


38  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

VOLUMES  OF  POEMS 

(For  periodical  publication,  see  Esdaile) 

1851  'Poems'  (First  Version  of  'Love  in  the  Valley'). 

1862  'Modern  Love.' 

^^1883  'Poems  and  Lyrics  of  Joy  of  Earth.' 

i7  'Ballads  and  Poems  of  Tragic  Life.' 

'1888  'A  Reading  of  Earth.' 

592  'Poems  (The  Empty  Purse  and  Others)'. 

1892  '  Modern  Love,  The  Sage  Enamoured.' 

1892  '  Jump-to-Glory  Jane.' 

^  1898  'Odes  in  Contribution  to  the  Song  of  French  History.' 

^^1901  'A  Reading  of  Life.' 

>^.1909  'Last  Poems.' 

/^  1910  '  Poems  Written  in  Early  Youth.' 

COLLECTED  EDITIONS 

1885-7    First  collected  edition  of  the  novels. 

1889-95  New  edition. 

1896-8    Limited  edition  (32  vols. — 3  of  poems). 

1897        Selected  Poems. 

1897-0    Library  edition  (17  vols. — 2  of  poems). 

1901-5    Pocket  edition  (18  vols. — 2  of  poems). 

1910-11  Memorial  edition  (27  vols.). 

1912        Poetical  Works  (1  vol.).     This  forms  part  of  the  'Standard' 

edition  now  in  course  of  publication,  18  volumes  in  all, 

of  which  13  have  already  appeared. 

BIOGRAPHY  AND  CRITICISM 

Hannah  Ljmch,  'George  Meredith;  a  Study,'  1891. 

Walter  Jerrold,  'George  Meredith,  An  Essay  towards  Appreciation* 

(English  Writers  of  To-day  Series),  1902. 
^G.  M.  Trevelyan,  'The  Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  George  Meredith,' 

1906. 
M.  Stui^e  Henderson,  'Greorge  Meredith:  Novelist,  Poet,  Reformer,' 
1907. 

^{Chapters  XIV  to  XVII  on  'Meredith's  Poetry'  by  Basil  de 
Selincourt.) 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  39 

A.  C.  Pigou.     'The  Problem  of  Theism  and  Other  Essays,'  1908. 

(Essay  No.  7,  'Optimism  in  Browning  and  Meredith.') 
J.  A.  Hammerton,  'George  Meredith  in  Anecdote  and  Criticism,' 
y  1909. 

Edward   Clodd,    'George    Meredith:    Some   Recollections,'    'Fort- 
nightly Review,'  July,  1909,  republished  in  'Memories,'  1916. 
Ernst  Dick,  'George  Meredith,  Drei  Versuche.'     Berlin,  1910. 
Constantin  Photiades,  'George  Meredith,  sa  Vie,  son  Imagination, 
^  son  Art,  sa  Doctrine.'     Paris,  1910,  Translation   by  Arthur 

Price,  1913. 
^  'The  Letters  of  George  Meredith,'  1912. 

^     'The  Humanism  of  George  Meredith'  in  'Contemporary  Literature,' 
by  Stuart  P.  Sherman,  1917. 

^  There  are  full  bibliographies  by  John  Lane  in  'George  Meredith: 
^^some  Characteristics.'     (Richard  Le  Gallienne.)     1§90  (Fifth  edi- 
tion, revised,  1900),  and  by  A.  J.  K.  Esdaile  in  'The  Literary  Year- 
Book  for  1907.' 


CHAPTER  III 

THOMAS  HARDY    (1840-        ) 

Hardy's  fatalistic  pessimism  offers  a  strong  contrast 
to  Meredith's  buoyant  optimism  and  high-spirited 
insistence  on  man's  power  to  control  his  destiny/  Their 
opposite  reaction  to  the  same  spiritual  crisis  must  be 
due  to  temperamental  difference,  for  the  circumstances 
of  their  birth  and  early  religious  associations  were  not 
dissimilar,  and  Hardy  had  not  the  excuse  Meredith 
might  have  pleaded  of  persistent  neglect  by  the  public. 
Born  in  the  hamlet  of  Higher  Bockhampton  in  the  dis- 
trict he  was  afterwards  to  make  famous  under  the  name 
of  Wessex,  Hardy  received  an  architect's  training  in 
the  neighbouring  town  of  Dorchester  (the  Casterbridge 
of  the  novels)  and  afterwards  in  London;  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five  he  had  published  an  article  in  'Chambers's 
Journal '  and  by  the  time  he  was  thirty-two  he  had  estab- 
lished for  himself  a  distinct  and  permanent  place  among 
the  writers  of  current  fiction.  His  first  attempt  at  a 
novel,  'The  Poor  Man  and  the  Lady,'  had  the  good  for- 
tune to  fall  into  the  hands  of  George  Meredith  and  John 
Morley  at  the  pubUshing  office  of  Messrs.  Chapman  and 
Hall,  and  after  being  recast  according  to  their  advice, 
obtained  pubHcation  as  'Desperate  Remedies.'  It  is  a 
novel  of  intrigue  after  the  manner  of  Wilkie  Collins,  then 
at  the  height  of  his  popularity,  and  gives  little  promise  of 
its  author's  peculiar  gifts.  But  'Under  the  Greenwood 
Tree,'  though  small  in  scope  and  slight  in  texture,  caught 

40 


THOMAS  HARDY  41 

the  charm  of  the  secluded  England,  as  yet  untouched 
by  modern  industrialism,  which  was  soon  to  yield  to  the 
advance  of  the  railway  and  the  elementary  school,  and 
was  ultimately  to  disappear  in  the  melting  pot  of  the 
Great  War.  *  A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes '  depended  for  interest 
more  on  plot  than  on  character,  and  betrayed  the  author's 
besetting  weakness — an  excessive  extension  of  the  long 
arm  of  coincidence  to  bring  about  a  striking  catastrophe; 
but  it  was  a  good  story  and  won  popular  favour.  Next 
year,  in  which  Hardy  married  and  retired  to  his  beloved 
Dorsetshire  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  came  a  really  great 
novel,  'Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd,'  and  his  position 
was  secure.  By  the  side  of  rustic  humour  and  pathos, 
there  was  now  a  firm  grasp  of  character  and  telling  power 
of  description  of  natural  phenomena.  The  sensational 
element  is  not  absent — the  dazzHng  of  Bathsheba  by 
Sergeant  Troy's  sword-play  is  rather  stagy,  and  Troy's 
violent  death  seems  as  unnecessary  as  his  murderer's 
insanity — but  apart  from  these  incidents  the  main 
thread  of  the  love  of  Gabriel  Oak  for  Bathsheba  is  admi- 
rably interwoven  with  the  minor  tragedy  and  comedy 
of  country  hfe.  Gabriel's  steadfast  devotion  meets 
with  its  due  reward,  and  Bathsheba  suffers  only  tem- 
porary retribution  for  her  waywardness;  they  are  dis- 
missed to  happiness  with  only  the  gentle  irony  of  rustic 
humour. 

Hardy  showed  wisdom  in  withholding  his  dark  phil- 
osophy from  his  novels  until  he  had  gained  public  atten- 
tion, but  that  he  already  held  it  is  manifest  from  its 
direct  avowal  in  poems  of  a  much  earlier  date.  He 
expressed  his  constitutional  pessimism  as  early  as  1866 
in  a  short  lyric  significantly  named  'Hap.'     He  asks: 


42  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"  How  arrives  it  joy  lies  slain 
And  why  unblooms  the  best  hope  ever  sown?" 

His  mind  would  be  more  at  ease  if  he  could  find  an  expla- 
nation in  the  hatred  of  some  malignant  Power,  but  not  so — 

"Crass  Casualty  obstructs  the  sun  and  rain, 
And  dicing  Time  for  gladness  casts  a  moan." 

Nature,  instead  of  giving  any  answer,  seems  to  him 
to  have  her  own  fruitless  questioning — 

"Has  some  Vast  Imbecility, 

Mighty  to  build  and  blend, 
But  impotent  to  tend. 
Framed  us  in  jest,  and  left  us  now  to  hazardry? 

"Or  come  we  of  an  Automaton 

Unconscious  of  our  pains?   .   .   . 
Or  are  we  live  remains 
Of  Grodhead  dying  downwards,  brain  and  eye  now  gone? 

"Or  is  it  that  some  high  Plan  betides, 
As  yet  not  understood. 
Of  Evil  stormed  by  Good, 
We  the  Forlorn  Hope  over  which  Achievement  strides?" 

If  the  poet  had  the  ear  of  the  unborn — it  is  a  pauper 
child  he  chooses  to  address,  but  the  poem  affords  no 
reason  for  the  distinction — he  would  counsel  non-exis- 
tence: 

"Breathe  not,  hid  Heart:  cease  silently, 
And  though  thy  birth-hour  beckons  thee, 

Sleep  the  long  sleep: 

The  Doomsters  heap 
Travails  and  teens  around  us  here. 
And  Time-wraiths  turn  our  songsingings  to  fear. 


THOMAS  HARDY  43 

Hark,  how  the  peoples  surge  and  sigh, 
And  laughters  fail,  and  greetings  die: 

Hopes  dwindle;  yea. 

Faiths  waste  away, 
Affections  and  enthusiasms  numb; 
Thou  canst  not  mend  these  things  if  thou  dost  come." 

It  would  have  astonished  contemporary  admirers  of 
the  rich  humour  and  rural  charm  of  'Under  the  Green- 
wood Tree'  and  'Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd'  to 
know  that  such  bitter  thoughts  were  already  lodged  in 
the  author's  mind.  He  had  taken  rank  as  an  idyllist, 
and  an  idylhst  for  many  readers  he  remained  long  after 
the  full  scope  of  his  intention  as  a  novelist  was  revealed. 

Passing  by  'The  Hand  of  Ethelberta,'  which  is  slight 
in  conception,  though  carried  through  with  skill  and 
spirit,  we  come  in  'The  Return  of  the  Native'  to  the 
first  and  perhaps  the  most  perfect  combination  of  what 
may  be  called  the  tragic  and  idyllic  elements  of  his 
genius.  The  tragic  note  is  struck  at  the  outset  in  the 
magnificent  description  of  Egdon  Heath,  the  spirit  of 
which  broods  over  the  whole  story  like  an  evil  fate. 
The  leading  character,  Eustacia  Vye,  with  her  dark 
beauty,  wayward  sensuousness,  and  foolish  ambitions 
is  evidently  doomed  by  the  author  to  calamity  from  our 
first  acquaintance  with  her.' ._  But  lest  we  should  hold 
her  responsible  for  the  misfortunes  that  overtake  her, 
he  warns  us  at  the  beginning  that  it  is  life  itself  that  is 
at  fault  :—;J 

"Eustacia  Vye  was  the  raw  material  of  a  divinity.  On  Olympus 
she  would  have  done  well  with  a  little  preparation.  She  had  the 
passions  and  instincts  which  make  a  model  goddess,  that  is,  those 
which  make  not  quite  a  model  woman.     Had  it  been  possible  for 


44  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  earth  and  mankind  to  be  entirely  in  her  grasp  for  a  while,  had 
she  handled  the  distaff,  the  spindle,- and  the  shears  at  her  own  free 
will,  few  in  the  world  would  have  noticed  the  change  of  govern- 
ment. There  would  have  been  the  same  inequality  of  lot,  the  same 
heaping  up  of  favours  here,  of  contumely  there,  the  same  generosity 
before  justice,  the  same  perpetual  dilemmas,  the  same  captious 
alternation  of  caresses  and  blows  that  we  endure  now." 

It  is  evident  that  Hardy  sympathizes  with  the  final 
protest  of  his  heroine  against  the  injustice  of  her  fate: 

"O,  the  cruelty  of  putting  me  into  this  ill-conceived  world!  I 
was  capable  of  much;  but  I  have  been  injiued  and  blighted  and 
crushed  by  things  beyond  my  control!  O,  how  hard  it  is  of  Heaven 
to  devise  such  tortures  for  me,  who  have  done  no  harm  to  Heaven 
at  all!" 

It  is  the  force  of  circumstance — the  maUgnant  power 
of  Egdon  Heath  to  dwarf  and  thwart  the  aspiring  soul — 
that  drives  Eustacia  Vye  to  irretrievable  disaster.  '  It 
is  circumstance  too  that  involves  her  husband  in .  the 
same  calamity,  for  he  can  hardly  be  held  more  fortunate 
in  escaping  with  his  life.  His  mother  falls  beneath  a 
stroke  of  fortune  utterly  undeserved.  All  this  is,  of 
course,  within  the  author's  intention.  Indeed,  it  was 
his  original  purpose  to  deny  the  final  meed  of  happiness 
to  the  gentle  Thomasin  and  her  devoted  Diggory  Venn, 
condemning  the  former  to  perpetual  widowhood  and  the 
latter  to  a  final  disappearance  from  the  heath,  "nobody 
knowing  whither."  Hardy  assures  readers  with  "an 
austere  artistic  code"  that  they  "can  assume  the  more 
consistent  conclusion  to  be  the  true  one,"  and  he  allows 
it  to  be  known  that  it  was  only  "certain  circumstances  of 
serial  publication"  that  led  to  the  happy  ending.  If  it 
is  to  the  editor  of  'Belgravia,'  in  which  'The  Return  of 


THOMAS  HARDY  45 

the  Native'  was  first  published,  that  we  are  indebted 
for  the  author's  change  of  intent,  most  readers  will  be 
grateful  for  this  ray  of  sunshine  in  the  prevailing  gloom, 
for  the  union  of  Diggory  and  Thomasin,  in  itself  natural 
enough,  can  hardly  be  said  to  invahdate  Hardy's  artistic 
purpose,  which  is  made  abundantly  clear  in  the  handling 
of  the  other  characters.  Only  those  of  a  mind  of  equal 
austerity  to  that  of  the  author  would  have  Diggory 's 
valiant  efforts  to  control  the  Fates  and  Thomasin's 
gentle  acquiescence  lead  only  to  empty  defeat  and  mean- 
ingless renunciation. 

The  austerity  of  the  plot  is  happily  mitigated  by  its 
picturesque  setting,  in  which  the  peasant  figures  fall 
naturally  into  place.  Their  superstitions,  their  fond- 
ness for  ancient  usages,  and  their  homely  and  often 
humorous  wisdom  give  the  story  a  warmth  and  colour 
which  do  much  to  relieve  its  severity  of  outline.  It  is 
difficult  to  conceive  what  the  novel  would  be  without 
the  bonfire  and  the  wedding  festivities,  the  play  of  St. 
George  and  the  Dragon,  the  raffle,  the  village  dance,  and 
the  burning  of  the  waxen  image  of  Eustacia  by  Susan 
Nonsuch,  for  all  these  are  part  of  the  action,  and  cannot 
be  conceived  in  isolation  from  it.  To  a  degree  perhaps 
unknown  outside  of  Hardy's  work,  they  give  a  complete 
representation  of  the  life  of  an  entire  community,  and  not 
mere  glimpses  of  the  lives  of  a  few  individual  members. 

Hardy's  declared  purpose  was  to  show  that  in  these 
sequestered  spots  "dramas  of  a  grandeur  and  unity 
truly  Sophoclean  are  enacted  in  the  real,  by  virtue  of  the 
concentrated  passions  and  closely-knit  interdependence 
of  the  lives  therein."  His  ideal  was  Greek  tragedy,  aijd 
in  '  The  Return  of  the  Native,'  he  may  justly  be  said  to 


46  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

have  attained  it.  There  is  the  same  great  sweep  of 
harmonious  design,  which  in  view  of  Hardy's  earUer 
profession  one  may  without  pedantry  call  architectonic. 
The  novel  is  magnificently  constructed ;  the  story  moves 
easily  on  the  heights  of  human  destiny,  without  haste  or 
wasted  effort,  and  with  a  perfection  of  workmanship  in 
detail  of  which  we  are  only  conscious  after  careful  exam- 
ination. One  scene  of  impassioned  or  humorous  inter- 
est succeeds  another,  and  we  follow  with  ever  heightened 
attention  to  the  appointed  end;  it  is  only  then  that  we 
perceive  how  every  smallest  part  fits  into  its  place  to 
make  the  perfect  whole.  This  unity  of  impression 
comes  mainly  from  unity  of  conception,  but  it  is  assisted 
by  the  subordinate  unities  of  time  and  place  which  are 
in  their  way  no  less  characteristic  of  *  The  Return  of  the 
Native'  than  of  Greek  tragedy  as  it  was  interpreted  by 
Aristotle  and  succeeding  analysts.  The  story  opens 
with  the  Fifth  of  November  bonfires  about  which  the 
fates  of  Thomasin  and  Eustacia  centre,  and  passes  to 
the  Christmas  Festival  which  welcomes  "the  return  of 
the  native"  and  brings  as  its  ultimate  consequence  the 
marriage,  first  of  Thomasin  and  Wildeve,  and  then  of 
Eustacia  and  Clym  Yeobright.  The  last  hot  day  of 
August  conducts  Clym's  mother  to  her  doom,  and  the 
unintentional  signal  fire  of  the  following  Fifth  of  No- 
vember leads,  on  the  next  day,  to  the  fatal  flight  of 
Eustacia  and  Wildeve.  Within  a  year  and  a  day  the 
principal  characters  have  run  their  appointed  courses, 
and  Hardy  is  so  httle  concerned  with  what  happens  to 
the  other  characters  that  he  does  not  much  care  whether 
Thomasin  and  Diggory  are  married  or  not. 

Compared  with  'The  Return  of  the  Native,'  its  sue- 


THOMAS  HARDY  47 

cessor,  'The  Trumpet  Major'  shows  a  falling-off  in  power, 
though  it  is  a  pleasant  story  and  contains  some  unfor- 
gettable scenes.  In  'The  Laodicean'  the  dechne  is  still 
further  marked — indeed  it  seems  difficult  to  beUeve  that 
this  superficial  work  came  from  the  same  hand.  There 
is  a  slight  recovery  in  '  Two  on  a  Tower,'  the  plot  of  which 
is,  however,  still  open  to  the  charge  of  excessive  con- 
trivance, while  its  dramatis  personce  take  no  strong  hold 
on  the  imagination.  But  in  'The  Mayor  of  Caster- 
bridge'  Hardy's  hand  won  back  its  old  cunning.  Michael 
Henchard  is  powerfully  drawn;  his  rise  is  due  to  his 
own  energy  and  determination;  his  fall  to  the  obstinacy 
which  is  the  defect  of  these  quaUties.  Farfrae,  the 
Scotchman,  defeats  him  in  business  because  he  is  within 
this  Umited  sphere  the  better  man.  The  loss  of  Eliza- 
beth-Jane— if  a  man  can  be  said  to  lose  what  was  really 
never  his — arises  naturally  out  of  the  situation.  The 
minor  personages — and  perhaps  we  might  include  Far- 
frae— lack  the  vitality  and  humour  of  the  peasants  of  the 
earlier  stories,  but  Henchard  himself  is  one  of  the  most 
original  characters  in  fiction,  and  his  fate  is  worked  out 
with  overwhelming  power.  The  concentrated  bitterness 
of  his  "will"  is  thoroughly  in  keeping  with  the  author's 
conception  of  him  and  with  the  desperate  view  of  life 
that  conception  was  intended  to  illustrate: — 

"That  Elizabeth-Jane  Farfrae  be  not  told  of  my  death,  or  made 
to  grieve  on  account  of  me. 

&  that  I  be  not  bury'd  in  consecrated  ground. 

&  that  no  sexton  be  asked  to  toll  the  bell. 

&  that  nobody  is  wished  to  see  my  dead  body. 

&  that  no  murners  walk  behind  me  at  my  funeral. 

&  that  no  flours  be  planted  on  my  grave. 

&  that  no  man  remember  me. 

To  this  I  put  my  name." 


48  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

There  is  less  bitterness  and  more  charm  in  *  The  Wood- 
landers, '  which  kept  Hardy  to  the  humble  folk  and 
secluded  scenes  where  his  real  strength  lay.  Fitzpiers 
is  a  superficial  villain  and  the  mishaps  which  attend  his 
amours  are  too  forced  to  be  convincing;  but  there  is 
power  as  well  as  pathos  in  the  romantic  devotion  of 
Giles  Winterborne  to  Grace  Melbury  and  of  Marty 
South  to  Giles  Winterborne.  Marty's  last  words  at  his 
grave  unite  the  cry  of  the  heart  with  the  music  of  ex- 
quisite poetry: — 

"Now,  my  own,  own  love,"  she  whispered,  "you  are  mine,  and 
on'y  mine;  for  she  has  forgot  'ee  at  last,  although  for  her  you  died! 
But  I — whenever  I  get  up  I'U  think  of  'ee,  and  whenever  I  lie  down  I'll 
think  of  'ee.  Whenever  I  plant  the  young  larches  I'U  think  that 
none  can  plant  as  you  planted;  and  whenever  I  split  a  gad,  and  when- 
ever I  turn  the  cider-wring,  I'll  say  none  could  do  it  like  you.  If 
ever  I  forget  yoiu"  name  let  me  forget  home  and  heaven!  .  .  .  But 
no,  no,  my  love,  I  never  can  forget  'ee;  for  you  was  a  good  man,  and 
did  good  things!" 

'Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles,'  in  spite  of  its  unevenness 
and  its  toetedramatic  elements,  is  Hardy's  greatest  novel. 
It  lacks  the  sombre  perfection  of  'The  Kcturn  of  the 
Native,'  but  it  gives  fuller  voice  to  the  author's  passion- 
ate indignation  at  injustice,  human  and  divine.  It  is 
not  merely  social  convention  that  Hardy  rages  against 
in  this  picture  of  "a  pure  woman  faithfully  presented," 
but  the  natural  conditions  which  make  such  catastrophes 
not  only  possible  but  inevitable.  Take,  for  instance, 
his  account  of  the  Durbeyfield  family: — 

"All  these  yovmg  souls  were  passengers  in  the  Durbeyfield  ship — 
entirely  dependent  on  the  judgment  of  the  two  Durbeyfield  adults 
for  their  pleasures,  their  necessities,  their  health,  even  their  existence. 
If  the  heads  of  the  Durbeyfield  household  chose  to  sail  into  difficulty, 


THOMAS  HARDY  49 

disaster,  starvation,  disease,  degradation,  death,  thither  were  these 
half-dozen  Uttle  captives  under  hatches  compelled  to  sail  with  them — 
six  helpless  creatures,  who  had  never  been  asked  if  they  wished  for 
life  on  any  terms,  much  less  if  they  wished  for  it  on  such  hard  con- 
ditions as  were  involved  in  being  of  the  shiftless  house  of  Durbey- 
field.  Some  people  would  like  to  know  whence  the  poet  whose 
philosophy  is  in  these  days  deemed  as  profound  and  trustworthy  as 
his  song  is  breezy  and  pure,  gets  his  authority  for  speaking  of  '  Nat- 
ure's holy  plan.'" 

And  again  his  reflection  on  Tess's  first  betrayal: — 

"Darkness  and  silence  ruled  everywhere  around.  Above  them 
rose  the  primeval  yews  and  oaks  of  The  Chase,  in  which  were  poised 
gentle  roosting  birds  in  their  last  nap;  and  about  them  stole  the  hop>- 
ping  rabbits  and  hares.  But,  might  some  say,  where  was  Tess's 
guardian  angel?  where  was  the  Providence  of  her  simple  faith? 
Perhaps,  like  that  other  god  of  whom  the  ironical  Tishbite  spoke,  he 
was  talking,  or  he  was  pm*suing,  or  he  was  in  a  journey,  or  perad- 
venture  he  was  sleeping  and  not  to  be  awaked." 

The  final  arraignment  is  not  of  social  usage  or  human 
incapacity  or  cruelty,  but  of  divine  government: — 

"'Justice'  was  done,  and  the  President  of  the  Immortals  (in 
iEschylean  phrase)  had  ended  his  sport  with  Tess." 

In  reply  to  criticism  of  this  passage,  Hardy  recalled 
Gloucester's  lines  in  'Lear': — 

"As  flies  to  wanton  boys  are  we  to  'the  gods; 
They  kill  us  for  their  sport." 

But  it  is  obvious  that  what  Shakespeare  said  drama- 
tically, Hardy  offers  in  his  own  person  as  an  interpreta- 
tion of  his  own  work. 

It  is  a  pity  that  in  his  anxiety  to  prove  his  case  against 
the  Immortals,  the  novelist  has  at  times  strained  human 
probabiUties.     In  addition  to  gratuitous  coincidences, 


W 


50  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Angel  Clare's  preternatural  coldheartedness,  and  Alec 
D'Urberville's  conventional  villainy,  one  doubts  whether 
any  inducement  would  have  driven  the  mature  Tess  back 
to  degradation.  Meredith  notes  the  falHng-off  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  book  as  compared  with  the  beginning : — 

"The  work  is  open  to  criticism,  but  excellent  and  very  interesting. 
All  of  the  Dairy  Farm  held  me  fast.  But  from  the  moment  of  the 
meeting  again  of  Tess  and  Alec,  I  grew  cold,  and  should  say  that  there 
is  a  depression  of  power,  up  to  the  end,  save  for  the  short  scene  on  the 
plain  of  Stonehenge.  If  the  author's  minute  method  had  been  sus- 
tained, we  should  have  had  a  finer  book.  It  is  marred  by  the  sudden 
hurry  to  round  the  story.  And  Tess,  out  of  the  arms  of  Alec,  into 
(I  suppose)  those  of  the  lily-necked  Clare,  and  on  to  the  Black  Flag 
waving  over  her  poor  body,  is  a  smudge  in  vapour — she  at  one  time 
so  real  to  me." 

But  when  all  has  been  said  in  the  way  of  objection, 
'Tess'  remains  a  notable  work  of  art,  springing  from 
deep  feeling,  nobly  planned,  and,  on  the  whole,  master- 
fully executed.  The  author  has  succeeded,  as  in  'The 
Return  of  the  Native'  in  binding  the  different  "phases" 
of  his  narrative  (he  might  have  called  them  acts  in  the 
tragedy)  to  significant  scenes.  Tess's  girlhood  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  village  of  Marlott,  her  first  fall  with  Tran- 
tridge  and  the  neighbouring  estate  of  The  Chase.  "  The 
Rally"  takes  place  in  the  beautiful  Froom  Valley,  and 
the  melodramatic  incidents  following  Tess's  marriage  in 
the  ancient  manor-house  of  Wellbridge.  Retribution 
comes  to  Tess  in  the  bare  and  stony  surroundings  of 
Fhntcomb-Ash  farm,  and  renewed  temptation  in  Kings- 
bere,  the  original  home  of  the  D'Urbervilles  and  their 
last  resting  place.  Tess's  second  lapse  from  purity  and 
her  terrible  vengeance  are  assigned  to  a  lodging  house 
in  the  fashionable  watering  place  of  Sandbourne  (Bourne- 


THOMAS  HARDY  51 

mouth),  and  the  story  takes  on  the  unsympathetic  colour 
of  its  surroundings.  But  the  interest  rises  again  as  Tess 
makes  her  way  with  Angel  Clare  through  the  steepled 
Melchester  (Salisbury)  to  Stonehenge,  and  the  climax  of 
her  capture  is  of  Hardy's  best. 

One  wishes  he  had  left  her  there,  and  not  insisted  on 
showing  us  the  hoisting  of  the  black  flag  at  Winchester 
Gaol  and  'Liza-Lu  and  Angel  Clare  retiring  from  the 
story  with  joined  hands.  But  in  spite  of  all  these  short- 
comings in  details  of  craftsmanship,  Tess  remains  one 
of  the  most  vital  and  impressive  figures  of  modern  fiction, 
and  offers  a  convincing  plea  for  sympathetic  considera- 
tion of  the  social  problem  the  author  wished  to  present. 
The  art  and  power  of  the  picture,  with  its  wealth  of 
description  of  country  life,  its  frequent  pathos  and  occa- 
sional humour,  will  remain  a  delight  to  readers  who  have 
no  sympathy  with  Hardy's  angry  rebellion  against  the 
Fates  and  pay  no  attention  to  it. 

If  in 'Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles'  the  author's  sympa- 
thies sometimes  outrun  his  judgment,  in  *Jude  the  Ob- 
scure' his  pessimistic  philosophy  submerges  his  art. 
The  sex-obsession  from  which  Hardy  and  some  other 
writers  of  fiction  suffered  at  the  time — perhaps  as  a 
reaction  from  the  severe  repression  of  this  element  in  the 
English  novel  of  the  previous  generation — is  unpleas- 
antly obtrusive,  and  the  figure  of  the  triple  fratricide, 
Father  Time,  with  his  "Done  because  we  are  too  menny " 
is  too  grotesque  to  be  effective.  One  can  imagine  no 
state  of  human  society  in  which  Jude's  weakness  and 
shiftlessness  would  bring  anything  but  misfortune  to 
himself  and  those  who  had  the  ill-luck  to  be  dependent  on 
him;  but  wholesale  childmurder  is  not  one  of  the  usual 
results  of  domestic  mismanagement. 


62  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

'The  Well  Beloved/  Hardy's  last  published  novel,  is 
an  earlier  work  betraying  all  his  characteristic  weak- 
nesses, and  it  would  have  been  better  for  his  fame  if  it 
had  been  left  unprinted.  He  was  a  curiously  uneven 
writer,  interspersing  masterpieces  with  failures  or  con- 
ventional successes  of  which  the  most  probable  explana- 
tion is  fatigue;  but  his  best  work  reaches  to  the  highest 
mark  of  attainment  of  the  English  novel,  and  his  weaker 
stories  are  already  being  buried  in  a  kindly  obHvion. 
Hardy  seems  to  have  been  himself  not  unaware  that  his 
fame  would  rest  upon  the  Wessex  novels,  which  he  Usts 
under  the  general  title  "  Novels  of  Character  and  Environ- 
ment." He  describes  '  A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes,' '  The  Trum- 
pet Major,'  'Two  on  a  Tower'  and  'The  Well  Beloved' 
as  "Romances  and  Fantasies,"  and  classes  'Desperate 
Remedies,'  'The  Hand  of  Ethelberta'  and  'A  Laodicean' 
as  "Novels  of  Ingenuity."  Two  collections  of  Hardy's 
short  stories,  'Life's  Little  Ironies'  and  'Wessex  Tales', 
are  rightly  included  by  him  under  the  first  classification, 
for  they  present  in  miniature  the  method  and  point  of 
view  of  the  Wessex  novels.  '  A  Group  of  Noble  Dames ' 
falls  into  the  second  category  and  hardly  calls  for  further 
notice.  Hardy's  analysis  of  feminine  character  has 
nothing  like  the  range  and  balance  of  Meredith's.  His 
women  are  too  passive  victims  of  "character  and  environ- 
ment." A  recent  critic.  Professor  Stuart  P.  Sherman, 
in  his  'Contemporary  Literature'  (1917),  notes  "what 
pitiful  antagonists  of  destiny  these  rural  people  of  Mr. 
Hardy  make.  The  i*ntelUgence  of  mortals  is  wholly 
inactive  in  the  combat."  He  endows  his  women  richly 
on  the  passionate  side,  but  he  rarely  gives  them  credit  for 
good  judgment.     His  estimate  of  their  intelligence  was 


THOMAS  HARDY  53 

not  high.  He  speaks  in  'A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes'  of  "those 
stealthy  movements  by  which  women  let  their  hearts 
juggle  with  their  brains,"  and  again  of  "woman's  ruhng 
passion — to  fascinate  and  influence  those  more  powerful 
then  she."  "  Decision,  however  suicidal,  has  more  charm 
for  a  woman  than  the  most  equivocal  Fabian  success." 
The  habit  of  self-dispraise,  he  says  in  the  same  novel,  is 
"a  peculiarity  which,  exercised  towards  sensible  men, 
stirs  a  kindly  chord  of  attachment  that  a  marked  assert- 
iveness  would  leave  untouched,  but  inevitably  leads  the 
most  sensible  woman  in  the  world  to  undervalue  him  who 
practises  it.  Directly  domineering  ceases  in  the  man, 
snubbing  begins  in  the  woman;  the  trite  but  no  less  un- 
fortunate fact  being  that  the  gentler  creature  rarely  has 
the  capacity  to  appreciate  fair  treatment  from  her 
natural  complement."  Indeed  the  significance  of  the 
whole  novel,  so  far  as  it  has  any  general  significance,  is 
the  evil  influence  of  "a  pair  of  blue  eyes" — mere  feminine 
attractiveness — on  the  fates  of  men  of  much  greater 
value  in  heart  and  mind.  The  same  conclusion  is  sug- 
gested by  'Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd,'  'The  Return 
of  the  Native,'  and  'Jude  the  Obscure.' 

Hardy's  poems  have  perhaps  been  unduly  neglected, 
but  on  the  whole  the  general  preference  for  his  works 
of  prose  fiction  is  justified.  In  some  cases  he  has  taken 
characters  and  situations  in  the  novels  as  the  subjects  of 
poems,  and  it  is  curious  to  note  how  much  more  concen- 
trated power  he  gets  in  the  prose  medium.  'Tess's 
Lament,'  for  instance,  is  surpassed  in  emotional  intensity 
by  many  a  scene  in  the  novel;  for  pathos  and  sheer 
beauty  '  Marty  South's  Reverie,  The  Pine  Planters '  will 
not  compare  with  her  last  words  over  Giles  Winter- 


I 


54  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

home's  grave,  quoted  above,  and  the  various  poems  in 
which  the  Mellstock  Quire  appears  are  surpassed  in 
charm  by  'Under  the  Greenwood  Tree.'  What  we  do 
get,  in  the  later  poems,  as  in  the  earher  ones,  is  a  more 
direct  statement  of  Hardy's  philosophy.  He  still  holds, 
with  the  ancient  Greek  poet,  that  the  best  lot  of  all  is 
not  to  be.  Before  the  birth  of  consciousness  "all  went 
weU": 

"But  the  disease  of  feeling  germed, 
And  primal  lightness  took  the  tinct  of  wrong, 
Ere  nescience  shall  be  reaffirmed 
How  long,  how  long?" 

As  not-being  is  his  ideal  for  the  race,  it  is  his  best  wish 
for  the  individual.  'In  Childbed'  and  'The  Unborn' 
regard  the  beginning  of  life  with  dismay;  'Regret  not 
Me'  and  'After  the  Last  Breath'  look  on  the  end  with 
satisfaction : 

"  We  see  by  littles  now  the  deft  achievement 
Whereby  she  has  escaped  the  Wrongers  all, 
In  view  of  which  our  momentary  bereavement 
Outshapes  but  small." 

The  one  thing  that  moves  the  poet  to  a  kind  of  cheer- 
fulness is  triumphant  indulgence  in  sexual  desire.  Julie- 
June  is  a  "girl  of  joy"  in  the  literal,  as  well  as  the  con- 
ventional sense  of  the  word,  and  "bubbling  and  bright- 
some  eyed"  on  her  death-bed  chooses  her  bearers  "from 
her  fancymen."  The  girl  who  allows  "the  dark-eyed 
gentleman"  to  tie  up  her  garter,  with  consequences 
generally  regarded  as  untoward,  takes  entire  satisfaction 
in  the  outcome.  Ralph  Blossom,  by  whose  fornications 
"seven  women  who  were  maids  before  he  knew  them 


THOMAS  HAEDY  55 

have  been  brought  upon  the  town"  soHloquizes  with  grim 
humour  upon  their  probable  reflections — but  only  two 
out  of  the  seven  offer  any  reproval;  the  other  five  run 
the  gamut  from  resignation  to  triumphant  thankfulness. 
In  his  sixth  and  seventh  decades  Hardy  launched  and 
completed  a  vast  dramatic  study,  'The  Dynasts,'  partly 
in  prose,  partly  in  verse,  dealing  with  the  Napoleonic 
wars,  in  which  he  had  been  led  to  interest  himself  while 
writing  'The  Trumpet  Major.'  It  is  a  huge  spectacle 
in  nineteen  acts  and  one  hundred  and  thirty  scenes, 
intended  for  "  mental  performance  alone  "  (though  part  of 
it  has  been  successfully  staged).  The  list  of  characters 
for  each  of  the  three  parts  covers  two  or  three  pages, 
beginning  with  "certain  impersonated  abstractions,  or 
Intelligences,  called  Spirits"  and  ending  with  Wessex 
peasants  enlisted  as  soldiers  against  Napoleon  and  still 
lowlier  camp  followers.  The  "forescene  in  the  Over- 
world"  represents  the  Immanent  Will  as  working  "with 
an  absent  heed," 

"like  a  knitter  drowsed, 
Whose  fingers  play  in  skilled  unmindfulness." 

The  Will  winds  up  Napoleon  and  other  "flesh-hinged 
manikins"  "to  click-clack  off  Its  preadjusted  laws,"  but 
all  are  merely  puppets,  pulled  by  invisible  strings.  Then 
follows  in  ever  changing  procession  a  panorama  of  the 
successive  events  of  the  epoch  and  the  actors  in  it,  great 
and  small;  we  see  Nelson  on  the  deck  of  his  ship,  Pitt 
taking  counsel  with  George  III,  Napoleon  in  every  con- 
ceivable relation,  the  English  House  of  Commons  in 
debate,  the  common  soldiers  of  both  sides  on  the  battle- 
field, on  the  march,  and  in  their  cups.  It  is  a  combina- 
tion of  the  method  of  Shakespeare's  liistorical  plays,  with 


56  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

that  of  Goethe's  'Faust,'  but  with  less  humour  than  is 
afforded  by  either,  and  the  Wessex  scenes  hardly  give 
suflBcient  relief  for  the  intolerable  length  of  the  parlia- 
mentary speeches  and  diplomatic  discussions.  The  phil- 
osophy is  that  of  the  Wessex  novels  and  of  the  poems, 
though  in  the  closing  hues  the  Chorus  of  the  Pities 
breathes  a  hope  that  the  Immanent  Will,  ''That  neither 
good  nor  evil  knows"  may  "wake  and  understand."  If 
"God's  Education"  is  to  come  about  at  all.  Hardy  sets 
forth  in  a  poem  published  contemporaneously  with 
'The  Dynasts,'  it  must  be  brought  about  by  men. 
"Theirs  is  the  teaching  mind."  God  is  without  pity,  as 
he  is  without  plan  or  purpose. 

"My  labours — ^logicless — 

You  may  explain;  not  I: 
Sense-sealed  I  have  wrought,  without  a  guess 
That  I  evolved  a  Consciousness 

To  ask  for  reasons  why. 

"Strange  that  ephemeral  creatures  who 

By  my  own  ordering  are, 
Should  see  the  shortness  of  my  view, 
Use  ethic  tests  I  never  knew, 

Or  made  provision  for!" 

It  is  strange  that  Hardy  should  not  see  the  incon- 
sistency of  ascribing  to  the  "First  or  Fundamental 
Energy"  (to  use  his  own  phrase)  on  the  one  hand  abso- 
lute control  of  its  own  designs,  on  the  other  the  produc- 
tion of  unknown  and  unforeseen  elements  of  life  and 
consciousness. 


THOMAS  HARDY 


57 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


NOVELS 

^^.ASll  'Desperate  Remedies.' 

\%12  'Under  the  Greenwood  Tree.'  • 

^-^1873  'A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes.' 

y^  1874  '  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd  ('  Comhill') . 

'^^  1876  '  The  Hand  of  Ethelberta.' 

yr^"'"^^  1878  '  The  Return  of  the  Native.' 

^^'^  1880  '  The  Trumpet  Major.' 

/1881  '  The  Laodicean.' 

/  .  1882  '  Two  on  a  Tower.' 

\  1886  '  The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge.' 

y^    1887  'TheWoodlanders.' 

1891  'Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles.' 

■^     1895  'Jude  the  Obscure.' 

..      1897  'The  WeU  Beloved.' 


SHORT  STORIES 

.  1888  '  Wessex  Tales.' 

y^  1891  '  A  Group  of  Noble  Dames.' 

y  1894  'Life's  Little  Ironies.' 

y^   1913  'AChangedMan,  The  Waiting  Supper  and  Other  Tales.' 


POEMS 

'Wessex  Poems'  (wr.  1865-70). 
'Poems  of  the  Past  and  Present.' 
'The  Dynasts'     Pt.  1. 

tl  tC  II  o 

'Time's  Laughing  Stocks.' 
'Satires  of  Circumstance.' 
'Moments  of  Vision  and  Miscellaneous  Verses.' 


/ 


y 


68  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

MAGAZINE  ARTICLES 

'The  Dorsetshire  Labourer,'  'Longmans,'  July,  1879. 

'The  Profitable  Reading  of  Fiction,'  'New  Review,'  March,  1888. 

'Candour  in  English  Fiction,'  'New  Review,'  January,  1890. 

'The  Science  of  Fiction,'  'New  Review,'  April,  1891. 

'Hodge,  as  I  Know  Him,'  'Pall  Mall  Gazette,'  Jan.  2,  1892. 

BOOKS   ABOUT  HARDY 

Lionel  Johnson,  'The  Art  of  Thomas  Hardy,'  1895. 
F.  A.  Hedgcock,  'Thomas  Hardy,  Penseur  et  Artiste,'  1911. 
.  Lascelles  Abercrombie,   'Thomas  Hardy'    (Contemporary  Writers 
''  Series),  1912. 

H.  C.  Duffin,  'Thomas  Hardy;  A  Study  of  the  Wessex  Novels,' 
(Publications  of  the  University  of  Manchester,  England), 
1916. 

BOOKS  ABOUT  THE  HARDY  COUNTRY 

Wilkinson  Sherren,  'The  Wessex  of  Romance,'  1903. 

Charles  George  Harper,  'The  Hardy  Country,'  1904. 
^  Clive  Holland,  'Wessex,'  1906. 

\  Bertram  Windle,  'The  Wessex  of  Thomas  Hardy,'  1906. 
'  C.  G.  Harper,  'Wessex,'  1911. 

S.  H.  Heath,  'The  Heart  of  Wessex,'  1911. 

Herman  Lea,  'Thomas  Hardy's  Wessex,'  1913. 

A  useful  little  'Handbook  of  the  Wessex  Country  of  Thomas  Hardy's 
Novels  and  Tales'  is  published  by  Kegan  Paul  (London). 


CHAPTER  IV 
SAMUEL  BUTLER   (1835-1902) 
BY   JEFFERSON    B.    FLETCHER 

"  If  I  die  prematurely,  at  any  rate  I  shall  be  saved  from 
being  b6fed  t)y  my  own  success."  l^erhaps  death  at 
sixlj^'-seveii' years  of  age  can  hardly  be  called  premature; 
but"lSarhuer"Butler  died  none  too  soon.  In  the  decade 
and  a  half  since  his  death,  the  success  denied  him- — or 
spared  him — has  been  piling  up.  His  ideas,  which 
shocked  his  own  generation,  are  no  longer  shocking. 
They  seem  even  tame  as  compared  with  the  audacities  of 
his  own  disciple,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  with  whom,  by  the 
way,  he  may  Le  said  fo"  compare  as  light  with  its  own 
reflection  in  polished  brass. 

Butler  liked  to  regard  himself  as  an  amateur  in  what- 
ever he  did.  He  did  for  a  while  try  to  paint  for  a  living, 
but  good-humouredly  admitted  failure.  But  to  be  an 
amateur  did  not  mean  for  him  to  be  irresponsible.  On 
the  contrary,  "there  is  no  excuse,"  he  said,  "for  amateur 
work  being  bad."  The  professional  works  under  com- 
pulsions, the  amateur  at  his  own  sweet  will.  More 
than  all  but  a  very  few  writers,  Butler  throughout  his 
life  worked  at  his  own  sweet  will.  "Butler  used  to 
declare,"  notes  his  friend  Mr.  R.  A.  Streatfeild,  "that  he 
wrote  his  books  so  that  he  might  have  sometl&in^  to 
read  in  his  old  age,  knowing  what  he  liked  better  than 
anyone  else  could  do." 

.Butler  believed  not  only  in  the  amateur  spirit,  but  also 

59 


I 


60  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

in  a  reticence  that  refuses  to  break  silence  except  under 
inner  compulsion.     He  says  in  a  note  on  his  books: 

"I  never  make  them:  they  grow;  they  come  to  me  and  insist  on 
being  written,  and  on  being  such  and  such.  I  did  not  want  to  write 
'Erewhon,'  I  wanted  to  go  on  painting  and  founS  it  an  abominable 
nuisance  being  dragged  willy-nUly  into  writing  it.  So  with  all  my 
books — the  subjects  were  never  of  my  own  choosing;  they  pressed 
themselves  upon  me  with  more  force  than  I  could  resist.  If  I  had 
not  liked  the  subjects,  I  should  have  kicked,  and  nothing  would  have 
got  me  to  do  them  at  all.  As  I  did  like  the  subjects  and  the  books 
came  and  said  they  were  to  be  written,  I  grumbled  a  little  and  wrote 
them." 

This  may  be  playfully  put,  but  it  is  not  pose.  Butler 
meant  to  say  that  live  ideas  strive  to  get  themselves  ex- 
pressed very  much  as  live  germs  strive  to  get  themselves 
bom.  As  he  put  it,  "a  hen  is  only  an  egg's  way  of  mak- 
ing another  egg."  And  again  he  writes  that  the  "base" 
of  reproduction  "must  be  looked  for  not  in  the  desire 
of  the  parents  to  reproduce  but  in  the  discontent  of  the 
germs  with  their  surroundings  inside  their  parents,  and  a 
desire  on  their  part  to  have  a  separate  existence." 

As  Butler's  ideas  preeminently  germinated  spontane- 
ously out  of  his  experience,  it  is  more  than  usually  neces- 
sary to  know  his  life  and  personality  if  we  are  to  under- 
stand his  books. 

Samuel  Butler  was  born  December  4th,  1835,  at  Lan- 
gar  Rectory,  Nottingham.  His  father,  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Butler,  was  the  son  of  Dr.  Samuel  Butler,  Headmaster 
of  Shrewsbury  School  from  1798  to  1836,  and  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Lichfield.  It  was  to  Shrewsbury  School  that 
the  younger  Samuel  went  at  thirteen.  The  Headmaster 
at  that  time  was  the  grammarian  Benjamin  Hall  Ken- 
nedy, who  was  the  original  of  Dr.  Skinner  in  *  The  Way 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  61 

of  All  Flesh,'  It  is  only  fair  to  add,  however,  that  But- 
ler's references  to  Dr.  Kennedy  in  his  memoir  of  his 
grandfather  would  suggest  a  far  less  repellent  person- 
age,*^and  that  Butler's  own  school  days  were  by  no  means 
unhappy.  In  1854  he  went  to  St.  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where,  beginning  with  a  mathematical  course,  he 
later  changed  to  the  classics,  and  graduated  creditably 
enough,  but  not  brilliantly. 

While  still  at  college,  he  already  showed  his  satiric 
bent.  There  has  been  recovered  a  skit  in  verse  at  the 
expense  of  the  Deans  of  St.  John's  which  is  already  in 
Butler's  characteristic  manner.  The  two  Deans  are 
on  their  way  to  morning  chapel. 

"Junior  Dean:  Brother,  I  am  much  pleased  with  Samuel  Butler, 
I  have  observed  him  mightily  of  late; 
Methinks  that  in  his  melancholy  walk 
And  air  subdued  when'er  he  meeteth  me 
Lurks  something  more  than  in  most  other  men. 

"Senior  Dean:  It  is  a  good  young  man.     I  do  bethink  me 
That  once  I  walked  behind  him  in  the  cloister, 
He  saw  me  not,  but  whispered  to  his  fellow: 
'Of  all  men  who  do  dwell  beneath  the  moon 
I  love  and  reverence  most  the  senior  Dean.' " 

It  is  unnecessary  to  quote  the  ironic  catastrophe.  The 
tone  is  set;  the  satiric  point  made.  He  also  parodied 
the  tracts  of  the  Simeonites,  evangelical  agitators,  who 
nevertheless  powerfully  moved  him  for  a  time  even 
Uke  his^ctyp^jErnest  Pontifex  in  '  The  Way  of  All  Flesh.' 
After  gTS^ation  Butler  prepared  for  ordination  in  a 
poor  L(51id6n  parish.  He  was  rather  expected,  than 
called,  to  enter  the  ministry.  It  was  the  family  tradi- 
tion.    The  particular  doubt  that  deterred  him  may  well 


I 


62  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

have  been  therefore  but  the  last  straw.  He  says,  how- 
ever, that  it  occurred  to  him  that  the  unbaptized  boys 
in  his  night-school  were  on  the  whole  as  well  disposed  as 
those  that  had  been  sacramentally  purified  in  infancy. 
His  faith  too  much  shaken  for  further  thought  of  taking 
orders,  Butler  desired  to  become  an  artist,  but  as  his 
family  would  not  hear  of  that,  he  compromised  on  sheep- 
farming  in  New  Zealand. 

F^or  five  years,  1859-64,  he  led  a  healthy  outdoor  life 
among  downright  and  virile  pioneer  folk.  The  impres- 
sions gained  powerfully  affected  him,  especially  on  his 
return  to  the  over-sophisticated  and  conventional  life 
of  Victorian  London.  Meanwhile,  in  New  Zealand  itself 
he  had  far  from  rusticated  mentally.  Especially,  the 
just  published  'Origin  of  Species'  gripped  his  imagina- 
tion, and  gave  a  new"Turn  to  his  thinking.  He  laid 
aside  a  pamphlet  he  had  begun  on  "the  evidence  for  the 
Resurrection,"  and  wrote  the  brilliant  skit  entitled 
'Darwin  Among  the  Machines.'  This  was  published  in 
the'^Press'  of  Christchurch,  1863.  The  idea  is  the  gradual 
evolution  of  super-machines  that  with  ever-increasing 
complexity  of  organism  have,  like  the  higher  animals, 
developed  a  consciousness,  and  with  their  irresistible 
might  dominate  their  creator  man.  The  biological 
analogies  are  ingeniously  worked  out.  Besides  the  clev- 
erness of  the  skit,  it  can  also  be  taken  as  a  sermon  on  the 
industrial  age  when  men  and  women  are  literally  slaves 
of  the  machine. 

On  his  return  to  England  in  1864  with  the  proceeds 
of  his  sheep-run  in  his  pocket,  Butler  settled  himself  in 
modest  quarters  at  15  Clifford's  Inn,  London.  Apart 
from  vacation-journeys  to  Italy,  he  stayed  in  Clifford's 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  63 

Inn  the  rest  of  his  Ufe.  At  first  he  seems  not  to  have 
taken  up  writing  in  any  serious  way.  "My  study  is 
art,"  he  wrote  Darwin,  "and  anything  else  I  may  indulge 
in  is  only  by-play."  In  fact,  however,'  until  the  death  | 
of  his  father  in  1886,  his  financial  support  came  from  the 
profits  of  his  sheep  and  a  small  reversionary  bequest 
from  his  grandfather.  f 

In  spite  of  himself,  however,  he  could  not,  as  he  says, 
help  writing.  In  1865  he  contributed,  again  to  the 
Christchurch  'Press,*  a  pendant  and  corrective  of  '  Dar- 
win Among  the  Machines'  entitled  'Lucubratio  Ebria.' 
Machines  are  now  considered  as  "  extra-corporaneous 
limbs"  and  so  "extensions  of  the  personaUty  of  him  who 
uses  them,"  and  who  may  thus  be  said  to  have  "become 
not  only  a  vertebrate  mammal,  but  a  vertebrate  machi- 
nate mammal  into  the  bargain."  Machines  are  not  ene- 
mies of  mankind,  but  "are  to  be  regarded  as  the  mode 
of  development  by  which  the  human  organism  is  most 
especially  advancing,  and  every  fresh  invention  is  to 
be  considered  as  an  additional  member  of  the  resources 
of  the  human  body."  These  new  "machinate"  exten- 
sions of  personality  are  likely  to  be  costly;  accordingly, 
the  right  differentiation  of  civilized  man  is  not  by  race 
but  by  purse.  Mankind  has  two  essential  categories — 
the  rich  and  the  poor.  "He  who  can  tack  a  portion  of 
one  of  the  P.  and  O.  boats  on'To"Tiis  identity  is  a  much 
more  highly  organized  being  than  one  who  cannot." 

Those    two    essays,    half    playful,   half    serious,   but 
shrewdly  reasoned,   were,   as  Butler  himself  declared, 
the  germs  of  'Erewhon,'  his  first,  and  in  the  opinion  of    j 
his"  contemporaries,  his  only  important  book.     In  the    | 
Erewhonians  Butler  discovered  a  people  wise  enough  to 


64:  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

realize  the  peril  latent  in  machines,  and  so  to  make  the 
possession  of  even  an  innocent  watch  a  criminal  offense. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Erewhonians  frankly  admitted 
the  real  superiority  conferred  by  the  possession  of  the 
greatest  of  tools — wealth.  They  exempted  from  taxa- 
tion anyone  with  an  income  of  over  £20,000  a  year. 

■*Erewhon,  or  Over  the  Range'  (1872)  is  partly,  but 
only  partly,  a  Utopia  in  More's  sense.  The  title  implies 
the  same  idea:  Utopia  means  nowhere,  and  'Erewhon' 
is  "nowhere"  written  backwards.  But  Utopia  for  More 
meant  very  nearly  an  ideal  commonwealth, — a  place  in 
which  "there  are  many  things  that  I  rather  wish,  than 
hope,  to  see  followed  out  in  our  governments."  *Ere- 
whon '  is  a  far  more  subtle  conception.  Butler  approved 
the  Erewhonian  manners  and  customs  in  a  sense,  but 
only  in  a  sense,  and  not  always.  Often  his  sympathy  is 
ironical.  He  might  himself  at  times  have  been  puzzled 
to  say  whether  he  approved  or  not.  He  probably  would 
have  said  it  did  not  very  much  matter.  He  thought  it 
"a  bad  sign  for  a  man's  peace  in  his  own  convictions 
when  he  cannot  stand  turning  the  canvas  cf  his  life  oc- 
casionally upside  down,  or  reversing  it  in  a  mirror,  as 
painters  do  with  their  pictures  that  they  may  judge  the 
better  concerning  them."  Such  "spiritual  outings" 
give  relish  to  one's  "normal  opinions."  It  is  the  same 
notion  as  that  which  William  James  was  to  express 
later  in  his  "moral  holidays."  All  of  Butler's  works  are 
full  of  "spiritual  outings,"  and  he  never  tells  us  when 
they  are  going  to  happen.  His  mood  is  protean,  and 
his  rea.der  must  be  at  once  sympathetic  and  quick-witted 
to  keep  up  with  its  changes.  So  anyone  who  ventures 
to  Expound  his  views  must  beware  of  too  downright 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  65 

statements.  He  must  be  ready  to  point  t)ui  that  the 
opposite  opinion  has  weight  with  Butler  also.  For  per- 
haps the  most  nearly  positive  of  Butler's  opinions  may 
be  expressed  in  the  word  "moderation,  the  gospel  of  the 
mean.  He  abhorred  the  zealot,  and  one  of  his  principal 
counts  against  his  countrymen  was  their  excess  of  zeal. 
"God,"  he  said,  "does  not  intend  people,  and  does  not 
like  people,  to  be  too  good.  He  likes  them  neither  too 
good  nor  too  bad,  but  a  little  too  bad  is  more  venial 
with  him  than  a  little  too  good."  And  so  it  is,  Butler 
thought,  with  truth.  "Whenever  we  push  truth  hard, 
she  rims  to  earth  in  contradiction  in  terms,  that  is  to 
say,  in  falsehood." 

This  moderation  in  conduct  and  belief  the  Erewhonians 
certainTy  showed.  In  practical  terms  moderation  comes 
close  to  the  spirit  of  compromise.  The  Erewhonians 
unashamedly  preached  and  practised  compromise.  "A 
man  must  be  a  mere  tyro  in  the  arts  of  Erewhonian 
polite  society,  unless  he  instinctively  suspects  a  hidden 
'yea'  in  every  'nay'  that  meets  him."  The  obvious 
business  of  any  society  is  to  "get  on"  with  itself.  Con- 
formity, conventionality,  respectability — all  within  rea- 
son— are  principles  in  accord  with  which  sensible  people 
find  they  "get  on"  best.  So  the  most  substantial  citi- 
zens of  "Erewhon"  were  worshippers — more  or  less  on 
the  side — of  the  goddess  Ydgrun.  And  although  But- 
ler is  here  of  course 'Mttrng"at~British  deference  to  Mrs. 
Grundy,  he  was  himself  not  altogether  averse  to  hei*"^ 
liWES'd  sovereignty.  For  after  all,  her  court  is  very 
largely  made  up  of  "nice  people,"  and  Butler  believed 
in  "nice  people," — people,  that  is,  with  "good  health, 
good  looks,  good  sense,  experience,  a  kindly  nature,  and 


66  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

a  fair  balance  of  cash  in  hand."     Yram  in  'Erewhon  Re- 
visited' was  that  kind  of  person,  and  every  reader  will 
agree  that  she  was  thoroughly  nice.     We  are  reminded 
i    of  Rabelais's  recipe  of  "  Pantagruelisme " :  "c' est  a  dire 
vivre  en  paix,  joye,  sante,  faisants  tousjours  gran3,  chere.^^ 
I       The   Erewhonians   set   particular  store   by   physical 
I   well-being — "good  health,  good  looks."     They  regarded 
I    sickness  as  a  crime  against  society,  and  punished.it  as 
such.     One  of  their  judges,  in  summing  up  the  case  in  a 
tnSl  of  a  man  for  pulmonary  consumption,  says: 

v<^"You  may  say  that  it  is  not  your  fault.  The  answer  is  ready 
enough  to  hand,  and  it  amoimts  to  this — that  if  you  had  been  bom 
of  healthy  and  well-to-do  parents,  and  been  well  taken  care  of  when 
you  were  a  child,  you  would  never  have  offended  against  the  laws 
of  yoiur  country,  nor  found  yourself  in  yoxir  present  disgraceful 
position.  If  you  tell  me  that  you  had  no  hand  in  your  parentage 
and  education,  and  that  it  is  therefore  unjust  to  lay  these  things  to 
yoiu-  charge,  I  answer  that  whether  your  being  in  a  consumption  is 
your  fault  or  no,  it  is  a  fault  in  you,  and  it  is  my  duty  to  see  that 
against  such  faults  as  this  the  commonwealth  shall  be  protected. 
You  may  say  that  it  is  your  misfortune  to  be  criminal;  I  answer  that 
it  is  your  crime  to  be  imfortimate." 

If  Butler  may  not  intend  this  decision  with  absolute 
literalness,  yet  he  would  certainly  assert  that  there  was 
something  in  that  point  of  view.  A  poisonous  snake 
might  urge  that  it  could  not  help  being  poisonous,  but 
we  kill  it  nevertheless — for  being  a  snake. 

What  is  usually  called  crime,  on  the  other  hand, — 
the  deliberate  breaking  of  laws  made  for  the  general 
good, — is  so  atrocious  a  proceeding  that  it  can  only  be 
explained  as  a  kind  of  mental  obliquity,  an  astigmatism 
of  the  mind's  eye.  And  that  is  a  case  calling  not  for 
punishment  but  correction.     For  criminals,  accordingly, 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  67 

the  Erewhonians  provide  "moral  straighteners/'  whose 
procedure  is  substantially  like  that  of  our  physicians. 

The  social  importance  of  individual  health  is  recognized 
by  the  Erewhonians  especially  from  a  eugenic  point  of 
view.  They  hold  to  a  kind  of  mythology  of  birth, 
according  to  which  the  Unborn,  already  existing  in  an 
organized  and  conscious  world  of  their  own,  get  them- 
selves born  out  of  a  certain  unrest  and  curiosity  about  the 
temporal  world.  They  are  indeed  told  of  the  risks  they 
run,- — how  it  is  a  matter  of  lot  what  dispositions,  parents, 
prospects  may  be  assigned  to  them.  Furthermore,  each 
must  sign  an  affidavit  assuming  entire  responsibility. 
Naturally,  only  the  more  foolish  insist.  These  then  be- 
come a  kind  of  blind  impulse  harassing  two  married 
people  until  they  get  themselves  born.  Apparently, 
indeed,  they  sometimes  harass  even  unmarried  people 
Thus  Butler  has  a  note  on  the  importunities  of  his  unborn 
son. 


"I  have  often  told  my  son  that  he  must  begin  by  finding  mi 
wife  to  become  his  mother  who  shall  satisfy  both  himself  and  me. 
But  this  is  only  one  of  the  many  rocks  on  which  we  have  hitherto 
split.  We  should  never  have  got  on  together;  I  should  have  had  to 
cut  him  off  with  a  shilling  either  for  laughing  at  Homer,  or  for  re- 
fusing to  laugh  at  him,  or  both,  or  neither,  but  stiU  cut  him  off.  So 
I  settled  the  matter  long  ago  by  turning  a  deaf  ear  to  his  importu- 
nities and  sticking  to  it  that  I  would  not  get  him  at  all.  Yet  his 
thin  ghost  visits  me  at  times,  and,  though  he  knows  that  it  is  no  use 
pestering  me  further,  he  looks  at  me  so  wistfully  and  reproachfully 
that  I  am  half -inclined  to  turn  tail,  take  my  chance  about  his  mother 
and  ask  him  to  let  me  get  him  after  all.  But  I  should  show  a  clean 
pair  of  heels  if  he  said  'Yes.' — Besides,  he  would  probably  be  a  girl. 


)rn    J^ 
e  a 


(This  is  certainly  a  fit  scherzo  to  go  with  the  andante  of 
Elia's  'Dream-Children.')     In  truth,  children  are  bound 


I 


68  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

to  be  more  or  less  a  nuisance  to  their  paretits,  as  parents 
to  their  children,  but  either  less  so  in  proportion  if  they 
are  well  and  strong.  And  this  is  another  reason  for  the 
Erewhonian  insistence  on  physical  well-being. 

It  was  ideas  like  these,  may  be  quizzically  phrased  but 
at  bottom  serious,  that  "got  themselves  born"  in  'Ere- 
whon.'  The  romantic  setting  and  action  were  mostly 
afterthought,  imperfectly  worked  out.  Indeed,  when 
George  Meredith  reported  to  the  publishers,  Chapman 
and  Hall,  that  'Erewhon,'  was  overphilosophical  and 
unlikely  to  interest  the  public,  he  was  wrong  only  in  the 
second  clause.  The  first  half  of  the  book,  in  which  is 
told  how  Higgs  got  "over  the  range"  and  what  happened 
to  him  in  *  Erewhon,'  is  a  narrative  as  stirring  and  graphic 
and  real  as  Defoe  could  have  written.  But  later  the 
story  grows  perfunctory;  long  essays  are  patched  in, 
interesting  in  themselves,  but  artistically  quite  out  of 
scale.  In  this  respect,  'Erewhon  Revisited,'  the  sequel 
appearing  thirty  years  later,  is  far  more  of  an  artistic 
pieGe,  if  it  lacks  in  variety  and  audacity  compared  with 
the  original. 

'Erewhon'  succeeded.  A  year  after  pubUcation,  it 
was  translated  into  Dutch;  in  1879  into  German.  The 
British  public  clamoured  for  more — of  the  same  kind. 
Butler  characteristically  baulked.  Another  idea  in  his 
brain  was  pestering  him  for  expression,  and  prevailed. 
This  idea,  which  had  to  do  with  the  evidence  for  the 
Resurrection,  he  had  already  begun  to  treat  in  New  Zea- 
land, but  had  laid  aside  the  unfinished  essay.  He  now 
took  up  the  matter  afresh,  and  produced  'The  Fair 
Haven'  (1873)  anonymously.  .i*-^"- 

If  'Erewhon'  had  puzzled,  'The  Fair  Haven'  bewil- 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  69 

dered  and  angered.  If  the  ideas  in  '  Erewhon*  sometimes 
seemed  unorthodox,  even  revolutionary,  they  might  be 
excused  as  witty  fooling.  But  'The  Fair  Haven'  trifled 
with  sacred  subjects.  Moreover  irony  is  more  offensive 
to  "most  people  than  a  direct  attack.  Ostensibly  the 
book  was  a  serious  defence  for  the  Resurrection,  but  in  | 
making  that  defence  covertly  absurd  Butler,  in  the  eyes 
of  pious  people,  showed  himself  not  merely  a  sceptic, 
but  worse — a  blasphemer.  For  he  revealed  his  author- 
ship in  a  second  edition. 

Indeed,  there  was  still  another  count  against  the  book. 
To  give  verisimilitude  to  the  ironically  conceived  de- 
fence of  the  faith,  Butler  created  for  its  author  a  certain  I 
John  Pickard  Owen,  a  literal-minded  evangelical  relig-  1 
iorttst,  whose  life  and  character  are  discussed  in  a  pref-  I 
atory  memoir  by  his  brother,  William  Bickersteth  Owen.  * 
From  a  disinterested  point  of  vi6w  of  art  the  fulF-length 
portrait  of  an  authentic  prig  is  delightful.     The  brother 
WilHam  is  hardly  less  real,  if  intensely  disagreeable. 
But  to  the  pious  it  was  all  an  outrageous  parody  of  piety. 
Almost  the  only  exceptions  to  the  chorus  of  disapproval 
were  the  act  of  a  prominent  clergyman,  who  sent  the 
book  to  a  friend  whom  he  wished  to  convert,  and  the 
reviews   of  several   evangelical   journals   that   mistook 
'  The  Fair  Haven '  for  a  genuine  piece  of  Christian  apolo- 
getics, and  were  greatly  impressed  by  the  edifying  life 
of  the  supposed  author.     Naturally,  when  these  people 
discovered  their  mistake,  they  more  than  most  held  the 
name  of  Butler  in  anathema. 

Having  so  arraigned  the  clergy  against  him,  Butler  I 
now  proceeded  to  invite  the  hostility  of  the  British  I 
scientific  world  by  attacking  its  idol,  Charles  Darwin. 


70  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Such  an  attack  by  an  amateur  was  audacious  but  not 

necessarily  impious,  until  unfortunately  Butler  injected 

personal  charges  into  it.     He  accused  Darwin  not  only  of 

bad  science  but  also  of  dishonourable  conduct  in  failing  to 

give  due  recognition  of  precursors,  including  his  own 

grandfather,  Erasmus  Darwin.     The  quarrel  was  never 

>  made  up,  but  Darwin's  son.  Sir  Francis,  has  taken  the 

I  opportunity  to  express  before  the  British  Association 

\  generous  recognition  of  Butler's  important  contributions 

j  to  the  theory  of  Evolution. 

Certainly,  recognition  was  conspicuous  by  its  absence 
during  his  lifetime.  Professional  men  of  science  refused 
to  take  seriously  this  amateur  who  made  biological  heresy 
amusing.  His  first  foray  was  in  the  work  called  'Life 
and  Habit'  (1877).  This  was  followed  up  by  'Evolu- 
tion Old  and  New'  (1879;  second  edition,  1882);  'Un- 
conscious Memory'  (1880),  and  'Luck  or  Cunning' 
(1887). 

The  essence  of  Butler's  amendment  to  Darwin's 
theory  is  implied  in  the  last  named  title.  Luck?  or 
Cunning? — Is  development,  as  Darwin  thoughtTlsy  the 
peFp^ttiation  of  "small  fortuitous  variations,"  and  so  at 
bottom  blindly  mechanical?  Or  is  there  foresight  in 
development?  Are  changes  brought  about  by  response 
to  need?  Butler  vehemently  urged  the  latter,  vitalistic, 
conception  as  against  Darwin's  mechanistic.  Successful 
organs,  effective  habits,  produced  in  response  to  need,  are 
propagated  by  what  he  called  "unconscious  memory," 
that  is,  the  impulse  of  an  organism,  which  is  substan- 
tially a  prolongation  in  life  of  its  ancestors,  to  react  as 
they  reacted  to  similar  conditions. 

The  germ  of  this  view  in  Butler's  mind  was  the  fanci- 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  71 

ful  'Elucubratio  Ebria'  and  its  echo  in  'Erewhon.'  "I 
proposed,  to  myself,"  wrote  Butler,  "to  see  not  only- 
machines  as  limbs,  but  also  limbs  as  machines."  A 
machine  is  a  contrivance  consciously  contrived  to  meet 
a  need:  why  may  not  a  limb  be?  No  reason,  replied 
Butler;  and  science  to-day  appears  to  be  making  the 
same  reply. 

Butler  was  continually  revolving,  recombining,  rephras- 
ing his  notions.  That  is  one  reason  why  it  is  never  safe 
to  dismiss  as  mere  fantasy  his  most  fancifully  expressed 
ideas.  Thus  the  mythology  of  the  Unborn  in  '  Erewhon,' 
which  reads  like  a  Swiftian  satirical  allegory,  really  hangs 
together  in  principle  with  the  sober  biological  theories 
of  '  Life  and  Habit '  and  *  Unconscious  Memory.'  Butler, 
like  Weissmann,  held  to  the  view  that  the  germ  has  an 
existence  independent  of  the  organism  in  which  it  inheres 
and  continuous  from  generation  to  generation.  The 
organism,  then,  is  the  germ's  means  of  subsistence,  and 
of  getting  itself  propagated. 

In  close  analogy  with  the  same  biological  tenet  is 
Butler's  notion  of  "vicarious  immortality,"  a  very  pre- 
cious notion  with  him-^^^He^ehtborated  itfully  in  chapter 
eleven  of  'Erewhon  Revisited,'  but  also  epitomized  it  in 
many  notes  and  some  poems. 

Life  does  not  consist  in  the  mere  possession  of  organs 
or  tools,  but  in  the  use  of  them.  The  more  tools  or  or- 
gans we  have,  the  more  complex  and  extended  is  our  per- 
sonality. But  the  more  we  master  our  tools  the  more  our 
use  of  them  is  spontaneous  or  "unconscious."  The 
fingers  of  a  master-pianist  play  for  him,  leaving  his  mind 
free  to  meditate  the  effects  produced  by  them.  The 
healthy  stomach  digests  for  its  owner  without  his  being 


/ 


72  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

aware  of  what  is  going  on.  Similarly,  other  people 
work  for  us,  carry  out  the  ideas  they  have  got  from  us, 
even  in  our  absence,  even — if  we  have  made  our  lives 
count — after  we  are  dead.  So  far  as  we  live  by  a  great 
man's  ideas,  he  may  be  said  to  live  in  us.  Butler's  most 
perfect  expressions  of  this  noble,  if  not  wholly  satisfying, 
conception  are  in  the  epitaph  to  the  nameless  old  lady  in 
'Erewhon  Revisited'  and  in  the  sonnet  MeKKovra  ravra 
They  may  be  quoted  as  good  specimens  of  Butler's 
graver  manner  and  mood. 

"I  fall  asleep  in  the  full  and  certain  hope 
That  my  slumber  shaU  not  be  broken; 
And  that  though  I  be  all-forgetting, 

Yet  shall  I  not  be  all-forgotten, 
But  continue  that  life  in  the  thoughts  and  deeds 
Of  those  I  loved, 
Into  which,  while  the  power  to  strive  was  yet  vouchsafed  me, 
I  fondly  strove  to  enter." 

"Not  on  sad  Stygian  shore,  nor  in  clear  sheen 
Of  far  Elysian  plain,  shaU  we  meet  those 
Among  the  dead  whose  pupils  we  have  been, 
Nor  those  great  shades  whom  we  have  held  as  foes; 
No  meadow  of  asphodel  our  feet  shall  tread, 
Nor  shall  we  look  each  other  in  the  face 
To  love  or  hate  each  other  being  dead, 
Hoping  some  praise,  or  fearing  some  disgrace. 
We  shall  not  argue  saying  "Twas  thus'  or  'Thus.' 
Our  argument's  whole  drift  we  shall  forget; 
Who's  right,  who's  wrong,  'twill  be  all  one  to  us; 
We  shall  not  even  know  that  we  have  met. 
Yet  meet  we  shall,  and  part,  and  meet  again, 
Where  dead  men  meet,  on  Ups  of  Hving  men."        ytj 

A  further  extension  of  the  idea  leads  Butler  to  hK  con- 
ception of  God.     As  others  may  function  for  us,  entering 


SAMUEL  BVTLER^JU     I  73 

thus  into  our  personality,  as  it  were,  to  constitute  it  in 
its  fullness,  so  we  and  they  and  all  living  things  function 
together  to  form  a  total  personality  that  may  be  called 
God.  This  conception  Butler  developed  in  an  essay  for 
the  'Examiner'  (1879)  entitled  'God  the  Known  and  God 
the  Unknown.' 

Pn  1881  appeared  'Alps  and  Sanctuaries  of  Piedmont 
and  the  Canton  Ticino;^quizzically  labelled  on  the  title- 
page  '  Op.  6. '  This  was  an  account  of  Butler's  hoUdays 
in  Italy  with  digressive  meditations  on  many  things. 
The  volume  was  illustrated  by  himself,  with  some  col- 
laboration by  his  friends,  Charles  Gogin  and  H.  F.  Jones. 

It  is  a  fascinating  book  for  anyone  who  already  cares 
for  Samuel  Butler.  He  is  in  it  at  his  kindhest.  His 
humour  is,  for  the  most  part,  without  its  usual  mordant 
edge.  In  his  beloved  "second  country,"  in  the  Italy 
not  of  art  and  antiquity  but  of  homely  hamlet  and  rugged 
alp,  out  of  sight  of  "the  science-ridden,  art-ridden,  cul- 
ture-ridden, afternoon-tea-ridden  cliffs  of  old  England," 
his  mood  was  holiday.  Indeed  his  Italians  were  to  him 
altogether  a  hohday  people.  He  saw  them  as  gracious 
children,  without  consciousness  or  priggishness, — per- 
haps "sometimes  one  comes  upon  a  young  Italian  who 
wants  to  learn  German,  but  not  often."  They  seemed 
to  him  to  be  forever  clapping  their  hands,  and  crying 
out  "Oh  bel!"  The  genius  of  their  language  even  con- 
firmed the  Erewhonian  association  of  ill-being  with  guilt. 
ItaHans  say  of  a  person  who  has  met  with  an  accident  or  a 
misfortune,  "d  stato  disgraziato."  Take  it  all  in  all, 
Italians  realized  for  Butler  more  nearly  than  any  other 
people  his  own  gracious  gospel  of  grace,  true  spirit  and 
reward   of  human  redemption,   although   not  as  Paul 


(( 


/ 


74  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

understood  grace.  Butler  defines  the  gospel  of  grace  in 
'Life  and  Habit,'  and  with  a  lyric  fervour  unusual  for  his 
habitually  rather  plain  style: 

"And  ^ace  is  best,  for  where  grace  is,  love  is  not  distant.  Grace! 
the  old  Pagan  ideal  whose  charm  even  unlovely  Paul  could  not  with- 
stand, but,  as  the  legend  tells  us,  his  soul  fainted  within  him,  his 
heart  misgave  him,  and,  standing  alone  on  the  seashore  at  dusk,  he 
'troubled  deaf  heaven  with  his  bootless  cries,'  his  thin  voice  pleading 
for  grace  after  the  flesh.  The  waves  came  in  one  after  another,  the 
sea-gulls  cried  together  after  their  kind,  the  wind  rustled  among  the 
dried  canes  upon  the  sandbanks,  and  there  came  a  voice  from  heaven 
saying,  'Let  My  grace  be  sufficient  for  thee.'  Whereon,  faiUng  of 
the  thing  itself,  he  stole  the  word  and  strove  to  crush  its  meaning 
to  the  measure  of  his  own  limitations.  But  the  true  grace,  with  her 
groves  and  high  places,  and  troops  of  young  men  and  maidens 
crowned  with  flowers,  and  singing  of  love  and  youth  and  wine — the 
true  grace  he  drove  out  into  the  wilderness — high  up,  it  may  be,  into 
Piora,  and  into  such-like  places." 

Piora  is  an  ItaUan  alpine  hamlet  described  in  'Alps  and 
Sanctuaries,' 

'Alps  and  Sanctuaries'  is  a  "sentimental  journey"  by 
a  philosophic  traveller  as  sensitively  responsive  as  Sterne, 
and  more  clean-minded.  But  there  was  no  hope  for  it, 
or  for  any  book  by  Butler,  in  England  in  the  last  two 
decades  of  the  century.  "The  clerical  and  scientific 
people  rule  the  roost  between  them,"  he  said;  and  he 
was  anathema  to  both.  "What  is  the  good,"  he  wrote 
in  1883,  "of  addressing  people  who  will  not  listen?  I 
have  addressed  the  next  generation  and  have  therefore 
said  many  things  which  want  time  before  they  become 
palatable."  Such  a  declaration  on  the  part  of  an  unsuc- 
cessful autnor  is  rather  commonly  an  expression  of  hurt 
pride,  and  means  little.  In  Butler's  case,  it  was  appar- 
ently quite  sincere,  and  certainly  "the  next  generation" 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  75 

is  justifying  him  to  an  extraordinary  extent.  But  even 
this  admiring  "next  generation"  boggles  at  Butler's  next 
pronouncement.  In  1897  appeared  'The  Authoress  of 
the  Odyssey,  where  and  when  she  wrote,  who  she  was, 
the  use  she  made  of  the  Iliad,  and  how  the  poem  grew 
under  her  hands.'  The  clairvoyant  promise  is  fully 
redeemed.  We  learn  with  stupefaction  that  young 
Nausicaa  really  wrote  the  great  epic, — Nausicaa,  the 
sweet  and  sportive  maiden  who  was  so  discreetly  hospi- 
table to  the  shipwrecked  Ulysses.  And  we  learn  also 
precisely  where  she  lived  and  wrote,  to  wit,  at  Trapani 
on  the  Sicilian  coast.  It  is  a  charming  fancy  but  too 
strong  for  even  the  generation  of  Shaw  and  Chesterton. 
At  the  same  time,  if  Butler's  discovery  seems  as  fabulous 
as  that  other  "fountain  of  youth,"  at  least  he,  like 
Ponce  de  Leon,  opens  up  new  prospects  almost  as  valu- 
able. He  reintroduces  us  to  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey 
almost  as  if  they  were  published  yesterday.  He  does 
this  both  by  keen  and  humour-full  criticism  and  by  racy 
colloquial  translation.  For  as  by-work,  he  translated 
both  poems.  Perhaps  at  times  he  leans  too  far  away  from 
the  stilted  solemnity  of  such  translations  as  Butcher  and 
Lang's,  as  when  he  makes  Nausicaa  say:  "Papa,  dear," 
said  she,  "could  you  manage  to  let  me  have  a  good  big 
wagon?  I  want  to  take  all  our  dirty  clothes  to  the  river 
and  wash  them.  You  are  the  chief  man  here,  so  it  is 
only  proper  that  you  should  have  a  clean  shirt  when  you 
attend  meetings  of  the  council."  But  this  is  an  extreme 
instance.  In  general,  Butler's  versions  are  at  least 
prophylactic  to  the  sense  of  frigid  remoteness  given  by 
most  renderings  of  estabhshed  classics. 

As  fanciful  as  the  feminine  authorship  of  the  Odyssey 


I 
I 


( 


76  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

was  the  identification  of  "W.  H."  which  Butler  proposed 
in  '"Shakespeare's  Sonnets  reconsidered  and  in  part 
rearranged'  (1899).  "W.  H."  is  found  to  be  a  certain 
William  Hughes,  who,  being  in  want  of  money,  sold  the 
sonnets  addressed  to  him  to  a  bookseller.  The  idea  has 
not  so  far  been  taken  seriously.  Butler  himself  at  any 
rate  took  his  investigation  seriously  enough  to  learn  the 
sonnets  by  heart  in  the  process. 

*Ih  1901,  a  year  before  his  death,  he  pubUshed  'Ere- 
whon  Revisited.'  As  has  been  said,  the  sequel  is,  in 
point  of  artistic  unity,  an  advance  on  the  original.  Its 
plot  is  interesting  and  well-handled;  its  characters  are 
clearcut  and  original;  it  has  striking  situations;  it  con- 
tains piquant  ideas;  yet  it  lacks  somehow  the  vision,  the 
surprise,  of  'Erewhon.'  Possibly,  Butler  for  once  was 
pushing  his  idea,  instead  of  his  idea  pushing  him.  In  any 
case,  'Erewhon  Revisited'  is  to  some  slight  degree  what 
Butler  calls  an  "academy  piece." 

Its  plot  ingeniously  hinges  on  to  that  of  'Erewhon.' 
At  the  end  of  'Erewhon'  Higgs,  the  intruder,  had  es- 
caped with  an  Erewhonian  maiden  in  an  improvised 
balloon.  At  the  beginning  of  ' Ere whon  Revisited'  we 
find  him  in  England  in  possession  of  a  large  inheritance. 
Arowhena  is  dead;  their  son  is  a  young  man.  Possessed 
with  a  desire  to  revisit  Erewhon,  he  returns  there.  But 
it  is  no  longer  the  same,  and  he  himself  is  responsible 
for  the  change.  His  ascent  in  the  balloon  had  been  taken 
as  an  ascension  into  heaven,  and  himself  deified.  A  relig- 
ious cult  had  developed  around  his  legendary  person 
as  the  Sunchild,  and  most  of  the  old  institutions  had 
been  superseded — for  the  worse.  Higgs's  brain  reels 
under  the  shock.     Aided  by  Yram,  his  former  love  in 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  77 

'Erewhon/  and  their  son,  he  escapes  a  second  time,  but 
only  to  die  presently  of  softening  of  the  brain. 

The  characters  in  '  Erewhon  Revisited '  are  interesting, 
but  the  highest  triumphs  of  Butler  in  pure  art  are  the 
characters  in  his  posthumous  novel,  'The  Way  of  All 
Flesh'  (1903).  In  a  way  they  are  Dic^^hs-Kke,  yet, 
though  satirically  emphasized,  not  so  much  caricatured 
out  of  reality.  Their  creator  had  lived  with  them  a  long 
time — from  early  in  the  seventies,  when  he  conceived 
also  John  Pickard  Owen.  Indeed,  Butler  may  be  said 
to  have  lived  with  most  of  them  longer  still,  for  these  are 
drawn  from  his  own  family  and  youthful  acquaintance. 
'  The  Way  of  All  Flesh '  is  largely  autobiographical,  though 
its  author  breaks  away  from  fact  when  and  as  much  as 
he  likes. 

The  commandment ''  Thou  shalt  honour  thy  father  and 
thy  mother"  ranked  in  Victorian  England  high  among 
the  established  respectabilities.  But  the  family  tie, 
institutionaHzed,  proved,  Butler  thought,  a  source  often 
of  the  most  refined  tyranny  and  cruelty.  And  this 
might  be,  even  when  all  parties  concerned  are  actuated, 
hke  Christina  in  'The  Way  of  All  Flesh,'  by  high  and 
unselfish  motives.  Christina  is  a  spiritual  vampire 
with  her  little  son,  even  while  she  is  striving  devotedly 
towards  sainthood,  and  is  really  good-hearted.  The 
Rev.  Theobald  is  a  moral  clam,  to  be  sure,  always,  but 
he  becomes  still  worse  tryingTro  hve  up  to  what  he  con- 
ceives to  be  the  duties  of  a  father.  Butler  would  indict 
the  institution,  not  the  individual.  "I  believe,"  he 
writes  in  a  Note,  "that  more  unhappiness  comes  from 
this  source  [the  Family]  than  from  any  other — I  mean 
from  the  attempt  to  make  people  hang  together  artifi- 


78  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

daily  who  would  never  naturally  do  so.  The  mischief 
among  the  lower  classes  is  not  so  great,  but  among  the 
middle  and  upper  classes  it  is  kilhng  a  large  number 
daily.  And  the  old  people  do  not  really  Uke  it  much 
better  than  the  young."  The  youth  of  Ernest  Pontifex 
is  an  elaborated  illustration  of  this  reflection. 

On  the  other  hand,  Butler  fully  accepted  the  saying 
that  "  blood  is  thicker  than  water."  In  so  far, '  The  Way 
of  All  Flesh '  itself  is  an  illustration  of  this.  Ernest  does 
not  merely  take  after  his  ancestors,  he  is  literally  a  pro- 
longation of  them,  as  Butler  had  explained  in  '  Life  and 
Habit. '  That  is  why  the  novel  begins  with  the  fourth 
generation  back.  Old  John  Pontifex,  the  village  car- 
penter who  married  a  "Gothic  woman"  and  built  himself 
an  organ,  as  passed  through  travelled  and  worldly  George 
and  parochial  and  hypocritical  Theobald,  with  suitable 
modifications  from  their  women,  is  Ernest.  Ernest  is 
purged  of  the  vices  of  the  stock  only  by  moral  overthrow, 
by  enforced  revolt  against  all  the  sanctities  of  his  house. 
Incidentally,  he  is  aided  by  his  Aunt  Alethea,  arch- 
enemy of  all  humbug  and  provider  of  his  necessary  finan- 
cial independence. 

What  escaped  the  blighting  institution  of  the  Victorian 
pious  family  in  Ernest  was  nearly  spoiled  by  those  other 
institutions  of  school,  of  university,  of  church.  Rough- 
borough  is  no  hall  of  physical  torture  like  Dotheboys 
Hall.  Its  rack  was  subtle  and  spiritual.  Dr.  Skinner, 
the  headmaster,  was  not  a  bad  man.  He  was  merely  an 
institutionaUzed  egotist.  His  manner  of  accepting  a 
summons  to  supper  reveals  him — and  Butler's  art.  The 
great  man  is  playing  chess  with  Overton,  the  supposed 
narrator  of  the  story,  and  Ernest's  later  guardian. 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  79 

"The  game  had  been  a  long  one,  and  at  half-past  nine,  when  supper 
came  in,  we  had  each  of  us  a  few  pieces  remaining.  '  What  will  you 
take  for  supper,  Dr,  Skinner?'  said  Mrs.  Skinner  in  a  silvery  voice. 

"  He  made  no  answer  for  some  time,  but  at  last  in  a  tone  of  almost 
superhuman  solemnity,  he  said,  first,  'Nothing,'  and  then,  'Nothing 
whatever.' 

"By  and  by,  however,  I  had  a  sense  come  over  me  as  though  I 
were  nearer  the  consummation  of  all  things  than  I  had  ever  yet  been. 
The  room  seemed  to  grow  dark,  as  an  expression  came  over  Dr. 
Skinner's  face,  which  showed  that  he  was  about  to  speak.  The  ex- 
pression gathered  force,  the  room  grew  darker  and  darker.  'Stay,' 
he  at  length  added,  and  I  felt  that  here  at  any  rate  was  an  end  to 
a  suspense  which  was  rapidly  becoming  unbearable.  'Stay — I  may 
presently  take  a  glass  of  cold  water — and  a  small  piece  of  bread  and 
butter.' 

"As  he  said  the  word  'butter'  his  voice  sank  to  a  hardly  audible 
whisper;  then  there  was  a  sigh  as  though  of  relief  when  the  sentence 
was  concluded,  and  the  universe  this  time  was  safe. 

"Another  ten  minutes  of  solemn  silence  finished  the  game.  The 
Doctor  rose  briskly  from  his  seat  and  placed  himself  at  the  supper- 
table.  'Mrs.  Skinner,'  he  exclaimed  jauntily,  'what  are  those  mys- 
terious-looking objects  surrounded  by  potatoes?' 

"'Those  are  oysters.  Dr.  Skinner.' 

" 'Give  me  some,  and  give  Overton  some.' 

"And  so  on  till  he  had  eaten  a  good  plate  of  oysters,  a  scallop 
shell  of  minced  veal  nicely  browned,  some  apple  tart,  and  a  hunk 
of  bread  and  cheese.     This  was  the  small  piece  of  bread  and  butter. 

"The  cloth  was  now  removed  and  tumblers  with  teaspoons  in 
them,  a  lemon  or  two,  and  a  jug  of  boiUng  water  were  placed  upon 
the  table.     Then  the  great  man  unbent.     His  face  beamed. 

'"And  what  shall  it  be  to  drink?'  he  exclaimed  persuasively. 
'Shall  it  be  brandy  and  water?  No.  It  shall  be  gin  and  water.  Gin 
is  the  more  wholesome  liquor.' 

"So  gin  it  was,  hot  and  stiff  too." 

Influences  at  Cambridge  are  shown  as  rather  lateral 
than  vertical.  We  see  Ernest  mQulded  less  by  tutors  and 
professors  than  by  "associates.     Full-drawn  are  Gideon 


80  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Hawke,  the  Simeonite,  and  the  machiaveUian  Pryer, 
and  the  "nice  chap"  Towneley.  For  Ernest,  however, 
foreordained  by  father  and  mother  to  ordination,  not 
academicism  but  clericism  is  the  bogey.  Of  what  grad- 
ually overthrew  that  bogey,  of  his  extraordinary  "break" 
with  Miss  Maitland  and  the  disgrace  which  followed,  of 
his  still  more  extraordinary  evangelical  marriage  with 
the  drunken  prostitute  Ellen,  of  his  awakening  sense  of 
fact,  of  Aunt  Alethea's  timely  bequest,  of  his  triumphant 
home-coming,  well-dressed,  calm,  and  prosperous, — a 
prodigal  against  all  precedent  and  to  the  secret  scandal 
of  his  family, — of  these  cUmactic  steps  in  the  story  I 
have  not  space  to  speak  in  detail.  The  very  last  of  the 
novel  is  somewhat  doctrinaire  rather  than  dramatic. 

'The  Way  of  All  Flesh'  is  an  interesting  story  about 

interesting  people,  though  hardly  for  the  most  part  people 

one  would  care  to  meet;  it  is  a  masterly  arraignment  of 

the  defects  of  the  Victorian  qualities,  and  a  mordant 

I  commentary  on  the  perennial  frailties  of  human  nature; 

ibut,  as  usual  with  Butler's  work,  far  from  perfect  as  a 
work  of  art.  It  goes  on  after  it  is  properly  ended;  it  is 
too  often  disquisitional;  it  has  an  annoying  way  of  con- 
tinuing to  lead  up  to  the  point  for  some  time  after  the 
reader  has  arrived  there.  Although  it  is  the  one  of 
Butler's  writings  that  has  since  his  death  been  most 
talked  of,  and  is  no  doubt  the  weightiest,  there  may  be 
question  whether  his  quahty  is  not  more  transparently 
discernible  in  'Erewhon,'  'Alps  and  Sanctuaries,'  and 
the  'Notebooks'  taken  collectively.  Christina,  Dr. 
Skinner,  Mrs.  Jupp,  even  disagreeable  Theobald  are  real 
additions  to  the  world  of  the  best  fictitious  characters, 
but  in  general  the  lasting  things  about  Butler  are  his 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  81 

flashes  of  intellectual  wit  and  quizzical  humour.  And 
most  of  all  the  authentic  Butlerian — for  there  is  a  grow- 
ing tribe  of  such — will  turn  to  the  'Notebooks/  as  pub- 
lished in  selection  by  the  author's  friend,  Henry  Festing 
Jones  (1912).  Here  Butler  does  not  betray  his  imperfect 
powers  of  construction.  His  genius  is  happiest  in  the 
"happy  thought,"  the  pithy  epigram,  that  paradox  that 
is  not  merely  paradoxical,  the  graphic  thumbnail  sketch, 
sudden  illuminations  of  dark  places  in  men  and  things,  i^ 
It  is  a  book  for  the  understanding,  but  only  the  under- 
standing, to  live  by. 

This  is  a  sketch  of  Samuel  Butler's  literary  work.  He 
was  also  painter  and  composer.  And  doubtless  a  more 
thoroug'h  analysis  might  reveal  important  interaction 
between  his  several  arts.  But  he  himself  has  said  the 
the  best  things  about  himself, — for  instance,  this:  "I 
had  to  steal  my  own  birthright.  I  stole  and  was  bit- 
terly punished.     But  I  saved  my  soul  ahve."  • 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1862  'Dialogue  on  the  Origin  of  Species.' 

1863  'Darwin  among  the  Machines.' 

'A  First  Year  in  Canterbury  Settlement.' 
1865    'The  Evidence  for  the  Resurrection'  ('The  Fair  Haven/ 

1873). 
1872     'Erewhon.' 

1877  'Life  and  Habit.' 

1878  'A  Psalm  of  Montreal'  ('Spectator'). 
1880    'Unconscious  Memory.' 

1887    'Luck  or  Cunning  as  the  Main  Means  of  Organic  Modifica- 
tion.' 
1897    'The  Authoress  of  the  Odyssey.' 

'Erewhon  Revisited.' 

'The  Way  of  All  Flesh'  (wr.  1872-84). 


'Note-Books.' 

'The  Humoiu"  of  Homer  and  Other  Essays  with  Biographical 
Note.' 

In  addition  to  the  biographical  note  by  Henry  Festing  Jones 
mentioned  above,  there  are  separate  books  on  Butkr  by  Gilbert 
Cannan  (1915),  and  John  F.  Harris  (1916). 


^  ^&^^ 


CHAPTER  V 
ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  (1850-1894) 


/ 


Stevenson  was  not  unaffected  by  the  spiritual  dis- 
turbances which  assailed  his  immediate  predecessors 
and  contemporaries,  but  he  succeeded  in  keeping  the 
indications  of  them  out  of  his  pubhshed  work.  What  he 
had  to  say  met  with  almost  universal  acceptance  in  his 
own  generation,  and  he  said  it  with  a  verbal  felicity  and 
an  engaging  personal  touch  which  won  him  immediate 
popularity.  The  next  generation  was  inclined  to  deem 
contemporary  eulogy  of  his  work  excessive,  and  perhaps 
to  depreciate  him  unduly.  His  latest  critic,  Mr.  Frank 
Swinnerton  ('R.  L.  Stevenson,  A  Critical  Study,'  1914) 
describes  him  as  a  poseur  who  exploited  his  charm. 
Well,  if  he  were  a  poseur,  he  was  a  most  ingenuous  one, 
and  if  he  exploited  his  charm,  he  must  have  had  it.  In 
an  age  of  science  and  of  realism,  he  revived  the  romantic 
manner  of  Scott  in  the  novel  and  the  personal  manner 
of  Lamb  in  the  essay;  and  it  is  agreed  that  those  who 
have  continued  the  traditions  since  have  run  them  into 
the  ground.  Mr.  Swinnerton  says  that  if  romance  is 
dead,  "Stevenson  killed  it."  It  seems  truer  to  say  that  he 
brought  it,  temporarily  at  least,  to  life  again;  and  it  is  un- 
just to  blame  him  for  the  lack  of  vitality  in  the  work  of  his 
successors.  Whether  his  own  work  is  really  alive,  or  merely 
imposed  on  his  contemporaries  by  an  appearance  of  vitality 
is  another  question  which  Mr.  Swinnerton,  in  the  evi- 
dently  congenial  role  of  devil's  advocate,  pleads  against 

83 


84  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Stevenson.  It  is  certain  that  the  growing  fondness  for 
realism  has  greatly  restricted  the  extent  of  the  once 
powerful  appeal  of  Stevenson's  romances;  and  the  new 
generation  often  demands  stronger  meat  than  the  some- 
what dehcate  fare  of  the  essays.  But  the  charm  of 
Stevenson's  personaHty  remains,  and  it  seems  likely 
always  to  win  him  readers.  His  invariable  lucidity 
makes  the  approach  to  his  work  easy,  his  ideas  move 
within  a  limited  range  and  are  often  familiar  except  for 
a  felicitous  novelty  of  phrase.  All  this  makes  his  work 
quite  as  hkely  to  endure  as  that  of  more  original  authors 
less  concerned  with  beauty  of  expression  than  with  im- 
pressing their  views  upon  their  own  generation.  The 
attempt  of  some  fervent  admirers  to  count  Stevenson 
among  the  masters  of  our  hterature  is  steadily  losing 
ground;  but  his  place  as  a  minor  classic  seems  secure. 
A  writer  so  lucid  as  Stevenson  stands  in  no  need  of  an 
interpreter:  it  is  enough  to  let  him  tell  his  own  story, — 
not  a  difficult  thing  to  do,  as  much  of  his  writing — and 
that  the  most  permanent  in  interest — was  directly  or 
indirectly  autobiographical.  The  only  son  of  well-to-do 
and  indulgent  parents — his  father  was  an  eminent  en- 
gineer and  President  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh — 
Louis  (or  Lewis  as  he  was  then  called)  was  nursed  through 
a  deUcate  childhood  by  his  devoted  "Cummie,"  of  whom 
he  has  left  us  so  admirable  a  picture,  and  educated  at 
Edinburgh  University  for  the  family  profession.  He 
accompanied  his  father  on  engineering  expeditions  until, 
as  he  says,  "I  had  worn  him  out  with  my  invincible 
triviality.  The  river  was  to  me  a  pretty  and  various 
spectacle;  I  could  not  be  made  to  see  it  otherwise.  To 
my  father  it  was  a  chequer-board  of  hvely  forces,  which 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  85 

he  traced  from  pool  to  shallow  with  enduring  interest." 
Stevenson  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  decided  from  his 
childhood  to  be  a  writer,  and  at  the  age  of  sixteen  had  the 
good  luck  to  see  his  historical  sketch  of  the  Cove- 
nanters, 'The  Pentland  Rising,'  printed  privately.  He 
wrote  essays,  plays  and  stories,  and  edited  the  'Edin- 
burgh University  Magazine'  which  "ran  four  months 
in  undisturbed  obscurity  and  died  without  a  gasp." 
His  father  was  prudently  averse  to  his  adoption  of  litera- 
ture as  a  profession,  and  when  engineering  was  rejected 
suggested  the  law.  The  son  dutifully  submitted  and 
learnt  that  "Emphyteusis  was  not  a  disease,  nor  Stilli- 
cide  a  crime,"  but  the  legal  lore  he  acquired  served  only 
to  turn  a  phrase;  he  was  still  set  on  being  a  writer,  and 
sought  his  way  to  that  end,  notebook  in  hand,  in  a  mild 
Bohemianism : — 

"I  was  always  kept  poor  in  my  youth,  to  my  great  indignation  at 
the  time,  but  since  then  with  my  complete  approval.  Twelve 
pounds  a  year  was  my  allowance  up  to  twenty-three  and  though  I 
amplified  it  by  very  consistent  embezzlement  from  my  mother,  I 
never  had  enough  to  be  lavish.  My  monthly  pound  was  usually 
spent  before  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which  I  received  it;  as  often 
as  not,  it  was  forstaUed;  and  for  the  rest  of  the  time  I  was  in  rare 
fortune  if  I  had  five  shillings  at  once  in  my  possession.  Hence  my 
acquaintance  was  of  what  would  be  called  a  very  low  order.  Look- 
ing back  upon  it,  I  am  surprised  at  the  courage  with  which  1  first  ven- 
tvu-ed  alone  into  the  societies  in  which  I  moved;  I  was  the  com- 
panion of  seamen,  chinmey  sweeps  and  thieves;  my  circle  was  being 
continually  changed  by  the  action  of  the  police  magistrate.  I  see 
now  the  little  sanded  kitchen  where  Velvet  Coat  (for  such  was  the 
name  I  went  by)  has  spent  days  together  in  silence  and  making  son- 
nets in  a  penny  version  book;  and  rough  as  the  material  may  ap- 
pear, I  do  not  believe  these  days  were  among  the  least  happy  I  have 
spent." 


86  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Stevenson's  mother  was  the  daughter  of  a  Presbyte- 
rian minister,  and  his  father  held  strong  religious  convic- 
tions, so  that  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  youthful 
vagaries  of  their  only  child  caused  distress  and  mis- 
understanding. Fundamentally,  however,  the  son  was 
at  one  with  his  Puritan  ancestors  in  his  view  of  life,  and 
his  Bohemianism  was  merely  superficial.  The  Puritan 
conscience  had  shifted  its  emphasis  from  doctrinal  to 
social  issues,  and  Stevenson  felt  the  stress  of  the  new 
time.  He  retained  throughout  his  life  the  moral  earnest- 
ness of  the  Puritan  and  his  passion  for  exhortation. 
His  account  of  the  spiritual  crisis  he  passed  through, 
given  in  'Lay  Morals'  (written  in  1879,  though  not  pub- 
lished till  after  his  death),  is  characteristic: — 

"At  college  he  met  other  lads  more  diligent  than  himself,  who  fol- 
lowed the  plough  in  summer-time  to  pay  their  college  fees  in  winter; 
and  this  inequality  struck  him  with  some  force.  He  was  at  that  age 
of  a  conversable  temper,  and  insatiably  curious  in  the  aspects  of  life; 
and  he  spent  much  of  his  time  scraping  acquaintance  with  all  classes 
of  man-  and  womankind.  In  this  way  he  came  upon  many  depressed 
ambitions,  and  many  intelligences  stunted  for  want  of  opportunity; 
and  this  also  struck  him.  He  began  to  perceive  that  life  was  a  handi- 
cap upon  strange,  wrong-sided  principles;  and  not,  as  he  had  been 
told,  a  fair  and  equal  race.  He  began  to  tremble  that  he  himseK 
had  been  imjustly  favoured,  when  he  saw  all  the  avenues  of  wealth 
and  power  and  comfort  closed  against  so  many  of  his  superiors  and 
equals,  and  held  unwearyingly  open  before  so  idle,  so  desultory,  and 
so  dissolute  a  being  as  himself.  There  sat  a  youth  beside  him  on  the 
college  benches,  who  had  only  one  shirt  to  his  back,  and,  at  intervals 
sufficiently  far  apart,  must  stay  at  home  to  have  it  washed.  It  was 
my  friend's  principle  to  stay  away  as  often  as  he  dared;  for  I  fear  he 
was  no  friend  to  learning.  But  there  was  something  that  came  home 
to  him  sharply,  in  tliis  fellow  who  had  to  give  over  study  till  his  shirt 
was  washed,  and  the  scores  of  others  who  had  never  an  opportunity 
at  all.  If  one  of  these  could  take  his  place,  he  thought;  and  the 
thought  tore  away  a  bandage  from  his  eyes.     He  was  eaten  by  the 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  87 

shame  of  his  discoveries,  and  despised  himself  as  an  unworthy  favour- 
ite and  a  creature  of  the  backstairs  of  Fortune.  He  could  no  longer 
see  without  confusion  one  of  these  brave  young  fellows  battling  up 
hill  against  adversity.  Had  he  not  filched  that  fellow's  birthright? 
At  best  was  he  not  coldly  profiting  by  the  injustice  of  society,  and 
greedily  devouring  stolen  goods?  The  money,  indeed,  belonged  to 
his  father,  who  had  worked,  and  thought,  and  given  up  his  liberty  to 
earn  it;  but  by  what  justice  could  the  money  belong  to  my  friend, 
who  had,  as  yet,  done  nothing  but  help  to  squander  it?  A  more 
sturdy  honesty,  joined  to  a  more  even  and  impartial  temperament, 
would  have  drawn  from  these  considerations  a  new  force  of  industry, 
that  this  equivocal  position  might  be  brought  as  swiftly  as  possible  to 
an  end,  and  some  good  services  to  mankind  justify  the  appropriation 
of  expense.  It  was  not  so  with  my  friend,  who  was  only  unsettled  and 
discouraged,  and  filled  full  of  that  trumpeting  anger  with  which  young 
men  regard  injustices  in  the  first  blush  of  youth;  although  in  a  few 
years  they  will  tamely  acquiesce  in  their  existence,  and  knowingly 
profit  by  their  complications.  Yet  all  this  while  he  suffered  many 
indignant  pangs.  And  once,  when  he  put  on  his  boots,  like  any  other 
um-ipe  donkey,  to  run  away  from  home,  it  was  his  best  consolation 
that  he  was  now,  at  a  single  plunge,  to  free  himself  from  the  responsi- 
biUty  of  this  wealth  that  was  not  his,  and  do  battle  equally  against 
his  fellows  in  the  warfare  of  life. 

"Some  time  after  this,  falling  into  ill  health,  he  was  sent  at  great 
expense  to  a  more  favourable  climate;  and  then  I  think  his  perplex- 
ities were  thickest.  When  he  thought  of  all  the  other  young  men  of 
singular  promise,  upright,  good,  the  prop  of  famihes,  who  must 
remain  at  home  to  die,  and  with  all  their  possibilities  be  lost  to  life 
and  mankind;  and  how  he,  by  one  more  unmerited  favour,  was 
chosen  out  from  all  these  others  to  survive;  he  felt  as  if  there  were  no 
life,  no  labour,  no  devotion  of  soul  and  body,  that  could  repay  and 
justify  these  partialities.  A  religious  lady,  to  whom  he  communica- 
ted these  reflections,  could  see  no  force  in  them  whatever.  'It  was 
God's  will,'  said  she.  But  he  knew  it  was  by  God's  will  that  Joan 
of  Arc  was  burnt  at  Rouen,  which  cleared  neither  Bedford  nor  Bishop 
Cauchon;  and  again,  by  God's  will  that  Christ  was  crucified  outside 
Jerusalem,  which  excused  neither  the  rancour  of  the  priests  nor  the 
timidity  of  Pilate.  He  knew,  moreover,  that  although  the  pos- 
sibility of  this  favour  he  was  now  enjoying  issued  from  his  circum- 


88  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

stances,  its  acceptance  was  the  act  of  his  own  will;  and  he  had  ac- 
cepted it  greedily,  longing  for  rest  and  sunshine.  And  hence  this 
allegation  of  God's  providence  did  little  to  relieve  his  scruples.  I 
promise  you  he  had  a  very  troubled  mind.  And  I  would  not  laugh 
if  I  were  you,  though  while  he  was  thus  making  mountains  out  of 
what  you  think  mole-hills,  he  were  stiU  (as  perhaps  he  was)  con- 
tentedly practising  many  other  things  that  to  you  seem  black  as  hell. 
Every  man  is  his  own  judge  and  mountain-guide  through  life.  There 
is  an  old  story  of  a  mote  and  a  beam,  apparently  not  true,  but 
worthy  perhaps  of  some  consideration.  I  should,  if  I  were  you,  give 
some  consideration  to  these  scruples  of  his,  and  if  I  were  he,  I  should 
do  the  like  by  yours;  for  it  is  not  unlikely  that  there  may  be  some- 
thing xmder  both.  In  the  meantime  you  must  hear  how  my  friend 
acted.  Like  many  invalids,  he  supposed  that  he  would  die.  Now 
should  he  die,  he  saw  no  means  of  repaying  this  huge  loan  which, 
by  the  hands  of  his  father,  mankind  had  advanced  him  for  his  sick- 
ness. In  that  case  it  would  be  lost  money.  So  he  determined  that 
the  advance  should  be  as  smaU  as  possible,  and,  so  long  as  he  con- 
tinued to  doubt  his  recovery,  lived  in  an  upper  room,  and  grudged 
himself  aU  but  necessaries.  But  so  soon  as  he  began  to  perceive  a 
change  for  the  better,  he  felt  justified  in  spending  more  freely,  to 
speed  and  brighten  his  return  to  health,  and  trusted  in  the  future  to 
lend  a  help  to  mankind,  as  mankind,  out  of  its  treasury,  had  lent  a 
help  to  him." 

Stevenson's  precarious  health  ensured  a  considerable 
degree  of  parental  consideration,  and  necessitated  visits 
to  the  Riviera  and  Fontainebleau  which  afforded  literary 
material.  His  devotion  to  his  chosen  profession  was 
beyond  praise  and  won  speedy  acknowledgment.  He 
wrote  in  1887  "I  imagine  nobody  had  ever  such  pains 
to  learn  a  trade  as  I  had ;  but  I  slogged  at  it  day  in  and 
day  out;  and  I  frankly  believe  (thanks  to  my  dire  in- 
dustry) I  have  done  more  with  smaller  gifts  than  almost 
any  man  of  letters  in  the  world." 

At  twenty-four  he  had  published  half  a  dozen  articles, 
in   different   magazines,   and  "found    himself   able    to 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  89 

say  several  things  in  the  way  in  which  he  felt  they 
should  be  said."  He  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Savile 
Club,  and  became  acquainted  with  Sidney  Colvin,  Leslie 
Stephen,  W.  E.  Henley,  Andrew  Lang,  and  Edmund 
Gosse.  From  every  point  of  view  except  that  of  finan- 
cial return,  he  was  making  satisfactory  progress  in  his 
literary  career. 

The  financial  side  of  the  matter  became  important 
when  Stevenson  fell  in  love  with  Mrs.  Fanny  Osbourne, 
an  American  lady  who  had  come  to  Barbizon  with  her 
two  children  to  study  art.  In  1878  she  returned  to 
California  to  secure  a  divorce  from  her  husband,  and 
thither  in  1879  Stevenson  followed  her.  He  had  already 
pubUshed  an  account  of  a  canoe  trip  in  Belgium  and 
France,  'An  Inland  Voyage'  (1878),  which  contains 
amusing  and  well  written  passages,  and  'Travels  with  a 
Donkey  in  the  Cevennes'  (1879),  in  which  he  recaptured 
the  sentimental  charm  of  Sterne.  His  experiences  in 
crossing  first  the  Atlantic  and  afterwards  the  American 
Continent  afforded  material  later  for  'The  Amateur 
Emigrant'  and  'Crossing  the  Plains';  but  these  ex- 
periences are  more  important  from  the  biographical 
than  from  the  literary  point  of  view.  Stevenson  felt 
that  his  American  expedition  would  not  meet  with  the 
approval  of  his  parents,  and  he  accordingly  relied  on  his 
own  resources,  which  were  slight,  his  earnings  at  that 
time  amounting  to  some  fifty  pounds  a  year.  He 
shared  the  hardships  of  the  ordinary  emigrant  in  what 
was  then  called  "intermediate"  on  the  steamer  and  in  the 
long  railway  journey  across  the  Continent.  To  a  robust 
enterprising  youth  it  would  have  been  merely  a  dis- 
agreeable adventure,  but  to  Stevenson  with  his  delicate 


90  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

health  and  gentle  nurture  it  was  a  wellnigh  fatal  ex- 
perience. He  arrived  in  San  Francisco  without  re- 
sources of  strength  or  pocket,  and  only  Mrs.  Osbourne's 
devoted  nursing  saved  him  from  immediate  death  from 
consumption.  His  father  came  to  the  rescue  with  a 
telegram  assuring  him  of  a  permanent  income  of  £250 
a  year,  and  he  was  able  to  marry.  The  honeymoon, 
spent  in  the  mountains  north  of  San  Francisco,  gave 
occasion  for  perhaps  the  most  delightful  of  his  books  of 
description,  'The  Silverado  Squatters.'  With  his  wife, 
always  a  congenial  and  stimulating  comrade  and  a  de- 
voted nurse,  Stevenson  returned  to  Europe,  and  spent 
the  next  two  years  mainly  in  the  Austrian  Alps  at  Davos. 
There  he  prepared  for  the  press  two  collections  of  es- 
says, 'Virginibus  Puerisque'  and  'Familiar  Studies  of 
Men  and  Books,'  and  a  collection  of  short  stories,  'New 
Arabian  Nights.'  His  first  romance,  'Treasure  Island,' 
was  completed  and  ran  an  obscure  career  in  'Young 
Folks.'  But  it  was  not  until  the  publication  of  'Treas- 
ure Island'  in  book  form  in  1883  that  he  gained  any  con- 
siderable share  of  attention.  Its  success,  both  with 
the  public  and  the  critics,  was  phenomenal,  and  it  has 
enjoyed  widespread  popularity  ever  since. 

Stevenson  was  enormously  encouraged  and  stimu- 
lated: he  was  able  to  settle  down  to  steady  work  at 
Bournemouth,  and  produced  in  rapid  succession  'Prince 
Otto,'  'More  New  Arabian  Nights,'  and  'A  Child's 
Garden  of  Verses'  (1885) — the  last  a  really  notable 
achievement  and  in  its  way  a  classic.  Next  year  fol- 
lowed 'The  Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,' 
— the  idea  of  which  came  to  him  in  a  dream,  but  was 
very  carefully  elaborated — and  'Kidnapped,'  which  he 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  91 

began  with  great  enthusiasm,  but  broke  off  abruptly, 
inspiration  having  failed,  doubtless  owing  to  fatigue. 

The  illness  and  death  of  his  father  took  Stevenson  in 
1887  to  Edinburgh  for  what  proved  to  be  his  last  visit. 
His  health  failed,  and  he  sought  refuge  at  Saranac  in 
the  Adirondacks.  'Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde'  had  had 
an  immense  success  in  the  United  States,  both  in  its 
original  form  and  in  dramatized  versions,  and  Steven- 
son found  himself  a  literary  celebrity.  He  was  able  to 
make  advantageous  arrangements  with  New  York 
publishers,  and  began  in  'In  the  Wrong  Box'  the  col- 
laboration with  his  stepson,  Lloyd  Osbourne,  which  was 
continued  in  'The  Wrecker'  and  'The  Ebb  Tide.'  In 
spite  of  Stevenson's  better  acquaintance  with  sea-life — 
he  spent  three  years  cruising  in  the  yacht  'Casco'  on  the 
Pacific — the  two  latter  are  inferior  in  interest  and  power 
to'TreasureIsland,'andrathertookawayfrom  than  added 
to  his  reputation.  A  series  of  descriptive  letters  he  wrote 
on  the  South  Seas  had  the  same  effect;  but  a  visit  to  the 
leper  island  Molokai  gave  him  the  opportunity  for  re- 
futing an  unworthy  attack  on  the  devoted  missionary- 
martyr.  Father  Damien,  in  one  of  his  most  effective 
pieces  of  prose.  It  is  full  of  feeling,  tense  and  vigorous, 
and  has  not  a  trace  of  the  conscious  effort  which  may  be 
sometimes  discerned,  even  in  Stevenson's  finest  work. 

In  1891  Stevenson  bought  an  estate  near  Apia  in 
Samoa,  and  named  it  Vailima,  "the  five  waters."  He 
interested  himself  in  the  natives,  and  in  the  manage- 
ment of  a  large  household  cunningly  combined  the  tradi- 
tions of  a  Samoan  chief  with  those  of  the  head  of  a 
Highland  clan.  His  Pacific  experiences  gave  material 
for  a  new  volume  of  short  stories,  'The  Island  Nights 


92  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Entertainments/  and  for  charming  accounts  of  his  life 
at  Samoa  sent  to  Sir  Sidney  Colvin  and  afterwards 
published  as  'The  Vailima  Letters.'  His  health  seemed 
to  improve  and  he  worked  steadily,  bringing  'Kidnapped' 
to  a  successful  conclusion  in  a  sequel  'Catriona,'  and 
making  considerable  progress  with  two  other  stories 
'St.  Ives'  (finished  by  Sir  Arthur  Quiller  Couch)  and 
'Weir  of  Hermiston,'  which  remained  a  fragment  at  his 
death.  He  was  buried  on  Vaea  Mountain  near  the  home 
he  had  made  for  himself,  and  his  tomb,  which  overlooks 
a  wide  stretch  on  the  Pacific,  is  inscribed  with  the 
'Requiem'  which  is  among  his  best  poems : — 

"Under  the  wide  and  starry  sky, 
Dig  the  grave  and  let  me  lie. 
Glad  did  I  live  and  gladly  die. 

And  I  laid  me  down  with  a  will. 
This  be  the  verse  you  grave  for  me: 
Here  he  lies  where  he  longed  to  be; 
Home  is  the  sailor,  home  from  sea, 
And  the  hunter  home  from  the  hill.'' 

Stevenson's  poetry  and  the  plays  he  wrote  with  W.  E. 
Henley  hardly  call  for  serious  discussion.  He  will  be 
remembered  as  an  essayist  and  romance  writer,  and 
above  all  as  a  literary  personality  which  succeeded  in 
conveying  itself  in  imperishable  prose.  His  life  was 
one  of  almost  continuous  invalidism,  and  he  succeeded, 
not  merely  in  triumphing  over  this  infirmity,  but  in 
making  it  a  source  of  interest  to  his  readers.  He  wrote 
to  Meredith  the  year  before  his  death: — 

"For  fourteen  years  I  have  not  had  a  day's  real  health;  I  have 
wakened  sick  and  gone  to  bed  weary;  and  I  have  done  my  work  un- 
flinchingly. I  have  written  in  bed,  and  written  out  of  it,  written  in 
hemorrhages,  written  in  sickness,  written  torn  by  coughing,  written 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  93 

when  my  head  swam  for  weakness;  and  for  so  long,  it  seems  to  me  I 
have  won  my  wager  and  recovered  my  glove.  I  am  better  now,  have 
been,  rightly  speaking,  since  first  I  came  to  the  Pacific;  and  still  few 
are  the  days  when  I  am  not  in  some  physical  distress.  And  the 
battle  goes  on — ill  or  well  is  a  trifle:  so  as  it  goes.  I  was  made  for  a 
contest,  and  the  powers  have  so  willed  that  my  battlefield  should  be 
this  dingy  inglorious  one  of  the 'bed  and  the  physic  bottle." 

This  is  a  very  good  example  of  what  some  critics  of 
Stevenson  object  to  as  a  pose.  There  would  be  some 
ground  for  complaint  if  there  were  any  insincerity  in- 
volved; but  there  is  not.  What  Stevenson  says  is  true, 
and  the  fact  that  he  uses  telling  phrases  cannot  be  urged 
against  him,  for  he  had  practised  the  art  of  writing  until 
phrase-making  became  habitual  to  him.  There  is  self- 
consciousness,  no  doubt,  but  the  personality  revealed 
is  an  entirely  sympathetic  one.  The  virtues  which 
Stevenson  extolled  in  his  essays  and  exemplified  in  his 
romances  are  the  ordinary  virtues  of  courage  and  loyalty 
and  devotion  to  duty;  but  they  are  the  virtues  men  live 
by.  To  invest  them  with  freshness  and  charm  is  no 
easy  task,  as  the  multitude  of  Stevenson's  imitators  have 
proved.  He  lacks  the  originality  of  genius,  for  his  mind 
was  not  either  a  powerful  or  a  subtle  one.  He  is  at  his 
best  in  writing  for  and  about  young  people,  whose  emo- 
tions are  simple  and  whose  intellectual  insight  is  not  pro- 
found. Though  his  unfinished  'Weir  of  Hermiston' 
shows  a  greater  grasp  on  character  than  he  had  yet 
achieved,  it  is  probable  that  he  had  not  either  the  in- 
clination or  the  strength  to  grapple  with  the  complex 
problems  of  modern  life.  "But  to  be  the  delight  and  in- 
spiration of  youth  is  a  sufficient  meed  of  praise  for  one 
whose  powers  were  always  Mmited  by  physical  weakness, 
and  so  long  as  Stevenson  wins  the  regard  of  successive 


94  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

generations  of  ardent  young  men  and  women,  his  memory- 
will  withstand  critical  depreciation.  His  style  has  ease, 
suppleness,  limpidity,  felicity — every  virtue  save  that  of 
strength.  If  the  art  of  it  is  not  always  completely  con- 
cealed, it  is  very  seldom  irritatingly  obtrusive;  and  one 
has  to  seek  far  to  find  so  perfect  a  use  of  the  EngHsh 
language  to  convey  the  simpler  emotions  and  ideas  of 
life. 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  95 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PROSE  WORKS 

'The  Pentland  Rising.' 

'An  Inland  Voyage.' 

'Edinburgh:  Picturesque  Notes.' 

'Travels  with  a  Donkey.' 

'Virginibus  Puerisque.' 

'Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books.* 

'New  Arabian  Nights.' 

'The  Silverado  Squatters.' 

'Treasure  Island.' 

'Prince  Otto.' 

'The  Dynamiter.' 

'Dr.  JekyU  and  Mr.  Hyde.' 

'Kidnapped.' 

'Memories  and  Portraits.' 

'The  Black  Arrow.' 

'The  Master  of  Ballantrae.' 

'The  Wrong  Box.' 

'Father  Damien.' 

'Across  the  Plains.' 

'The  Wrecker.' 

'A  Footnote  to  History.' 

'Island  Nights  Entertainments.' 

'Catriona.' 

'The  Ebb  Tide.' 

'VaUima  Letters.' 

'Weir  of  Hermiston.' 

'St.  Ives.' 

'Lay  Morals  and  Other  Papers.' 

POEMS 

'A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses.' 

'Underwoods.' 

'Ballads.' 

'Songs  of  Travel.' 


96  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

PLAYS 

'1880  'Deacon  Brodie.' 

,1884  'Beau  Austin.' 

^^'  'Admiral  Guinea.' 

1885  'Macaire.' 

^  COLLECTED  EDITIONS 

The  Edinburgh  Edition,  27  vols.,  1894-97. 
The  Pentland  Edition,  20  vols.,  1906-07. 
The  Swanston  Edition,  26  vols.,  1911-12. 

BIOGRAPHY  AND  CRITICISM 

Sidney  Colvin,  'The  Letters  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,'  1899. 
^    Graham  Balfour,  'The  Life  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,'  1901.     Re- 
vised edition,  1915. 

H.  B.  Baildon,  'Robert  Louis  Stevenson:  A  Life  Study  in  Criticism/ 
1901. 

Lloyd  Osboume  and  Isobel  Osbourne  Strong,  'Memories  of  Vailima, 
1903. 

A,  H.  Japp,  'R.  L.  Stevenson:  A  Record,  an  Estimate  and  a  Me- 
morial,' 1905. 

J.  A.  Hammerton,  'Stevensoniana,'  1910. 
..      E.  B.  Simpson,  'Stevenson  Originals,'  1912. 

R.  L.  B.  Stevenson,  'R.  L.  Stevenson,'  1913. 

F.  Swinnerton,  'R.  L.  Stevenson:  A  Critical  Study,'  1914. 

Mrs.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  'The  Cruise  of  the  Janet  Nichol  among  the 
^  South  Sea  Islands,'  1914. 

Sir  A.  W.  Pinero,  'Robert  Louis  Stevenson  as  a  Dramatist,'  1914. 

Sir  Walter  A.  Raleigh,  'Stevenson,'  1915. 

Clayton  Hamilton,  'On  the  Trail  of  Stevenson,'  1915. 

!  \        'A  Bibliography  of  the  Works  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson'  by 
\      Colonel  W.  F.  Prideaux,  is  very  full  and  detailed  up  to  the  date  of 
its  pubUcation  (1903). 


CHAPTER  VI 

GEORGE  GISSING  (1857-1903) 

The  literary  reputation  of  George  Gissing,  never  very 
high  during  his  lifetime,  has  been  rather  enhanced  since 
his  death.  Most  of  his  successful  contemporaries  have 
vanished  into  obUvion,  but  Gissing's  personality,  his 
methods,  and  his  achievement  continue  to  engage  the 
serious  attention  of  students  of  hterature,  though  one 
judges  from  the  infrequency  of  editions  of  Gissing  that 
he  has  still  few  readers.  His  personaUty  was  indeed 
an  elusive  and  puzzUng  one,  and  it  is  only  in  the  light  of 
revelations  made  since  his  death  by  his  friends  that  we 
are  able  to  arrive  at  a  just  estimate  of  his  peculiar 
nature.  The  popular  impression  of  him  as  a  poverty- 
stricken  writer  of  realistic  and  sympathetic  studies  of  Eng- 
lish working-class  life  is,  of  course,  altogether  astray. 
He  regarded  with  loathing  the  working  people  with  whom 
he  was  obliged  to  associate,  and  wished  only  "to  wander 
endlessly  amid  the  silence  of  the  ancient  world,  to-day 
and  all  its  sounds  forgotten."  His  favourite  subject  of 
study  and  conversation  was  Greek  metres,  and  he  de- 
spised people  who  did  not  know  "the  difference  between 
dochmiacs  and  antispasts." 

His  temper  was  that  of  the  aristocratic  scholar,  and 
if  he  had  taken  the  ways  open  to  him  to  earn  a  modest 
living  by  means  of  his  classical  culture,  he  could  have 
done  so.  This  is  made  abundantly  clear  by  the  testi- 
mony of  Frederic  Harrison  and  H.  G.  Wells,  who  knew 
8  ^...^^•— •—-  ■'-         97  ^^ 


98  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

him  and  held  him  in  high  esteem,  and  above  all  by  the 
curious  book  written  by  his  fellow-student  and  life- 
long friend  Morley  Roberts,  'The  Private  Life  of 
Henry  Maitland.'  This  is  not  a  good  book;  it  is 
badly  arranged  and  poorly  written.  The  thin  pretence 
of  speaking  of  Gissing  as  "Maitland"  and  of  his  principal 
books  under  sHghtly  changed  titles;  of  Frederic  Harri- 
son as  "Harold  Edgewood,"  of  John  Morley  as  "John 
Harley,"  of  H.  G.  Wells  as  "G.  H.  Rivers,"  of  Edward 
Clodd  as  "Edmund  Roden,"  and  so  on,  is  an  irritating 
futihty;  but  it  does  give  us  the  biographical  facts; 
and  the  facts  are  necessary  to  an  understanding  of  Gis- 
sing's  personality  and  his  work. 

The  son  of  a  Wakefield  chemist,  Gissing  at  fourteen 
won  an  entrance  scholarship  at  the  Owens  College, 
Manchester  (now  one  of  the  leading  universities),  and 
distinguished  himself  there  as  a  student,  carrying  off 
many  prizes.  He  had  then  and  retained  all  his  Ufe  the 
true  mark  of  the  scholar,  a  disinterested  passion  for 
learning,  which  is  somewhat  rare  in  Anglo-Saxon  youth. 
He  did  himself  no  more  than  justice  when  he  wrote  in 
'The  Private  Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft':  "With  leisure 
and  tranquility  of  mind,  I  should  have  amassed  learning. 
Within  the  walls  of  a  college,  I  should  have  hved  so  hap- 
pily, so  harmlessly,  my  imagination  ever  busy  with  the 
old  world." 

How  was  it  that  Gissing,  with  these  remarkable  capac- 
ities and  inclinations  and  his  foot  bravely  set  on  the 
first  rung  of  the  ladder  of  learning,  failed  to  realize  an 
aim  so  ardently  desired  and  apparently  not  so  difficult 
of  attainment?  The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  defects 
of   character  rare   in   combination   with   his   scholarly 


GEORGE  GISSING  99 

qualities.  He  had  a  strongly  developed  sexual  nature 
and  strange  weakness  of  judgment.  He  was  a  shy, 
timid,  sensitive,  lonely  boy,  and  before  he  was  nineteen 
or  had  taken  his  degree,  he  had  formed  a  connection  with 
a  woman  of  the  town,  which  ruined  his  whole  life. 
With  that  strange  mixture  of  ideaHsm  and  sensuahty 
characteristic  of  him,  he  married  her,  and  when  he 
found  himseK  in  financial  straits  owing  to  her  demands 
upon  him,  he  was  driven  to  stealing  from  his  fellow- 
students.  Caught  in  the  act  by  a  detective  who  was  set 
to  watch,  he  was  imprisoned,  and  his  academic  career,  of 
course,  came  to  an  end. 

It  was  the  year  of  the  Centennial  Exhibition  at  Phil- 
adelphia, and  Gissing  went  to  begin  his  fortunes  again  in 
the  New  World.  He  sold  short  stories  to  the  'Chicago 
Tribune'  at  a  fair  rate  till  he  had  written  himself  out,  and 
then  he  betook  himself  to  Troy,  N.  Y.,  as  some  of  his  work 
had  been  reprinted  in  a  paper  there.  But  the  Troy  edi- 
tor saw  no  reason  why  he  should  buy  what  he  could  bor- 
row from  his  contemporaries,  and  Gissing  was  driven  to 
earning  money,  first  as  assistant  to  a  travelling  photog- 
rapher, then  as  a  gas  fitter.  Intolerably  homesick,  he 
made  his  way  by  Germany  back  to  London  and  began  to 
write  novels — not  because  he  liked  it,  but  because  he 
needed  money,  and  for  journahsm,  the  only  other  way 
open  to  him,  he  had  little  gift  and  no  inclination.  The 
fault  of  his  youth  had  left  him  with  impaired  health  and 
a  wife  who  continued  her  career  of  vice  and  drunkenness 
until  it  was  brought  to  an  end  by  her  death.  It  is  to 
Gissing's  credit  that  he  contributed  a  small  weekly  sum — 
between  two  and  three  dollars — to  her  support;  but 
small  as  it  was,  he  found  it  a  burden,  and  he  had  often 


100  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

great  difficulty  in  providing  himself  with  the  necessities 
of  life.  Of  these  early  struggles,  from  which  he  sought 
temporary  respite  in  the  British  Museum  Reading  Room, 
he  has  given  us  a  scrupulously  accurate  account  in  'New 
Grub  Street':— 

"No  native  impulse  had  directed  him  to  novel-writing.  His  in- 
tellectual temper  was  that  of  the  student,  the  scholar,  but  strongly 
blended  with  a  love  of  independence  which  had  always  made  him 
think  with  distaste  of  a  teacher's  life.  The  stories  he  wrote  were 
scraps  of  immature  psychology — the  last  thing  a  magazine  would 
accept  from  an  unknown  man. 

"His  money  dwindled,  and  there  came  a  winter  during  which  he 
suffered  much  from  cold  and  himger.  What  a  blessed  refuge  it  was, 
there  under  the  great  dome,  when  he  must  else  have  sat  in  his  windy 
garret  with  the  mere  pretence  of  a  fire!  The  Reading-room  was  his 
true  home;  its  warmth  enwrapped  him  kindly;  the  peculiar  odour 
of  its  atmosphere — at  first  a  cause  of  headache — grew  dear  and  de- 
lightful to  him.  But  he  could  not  sit  here  until  his  last  penny 
should  be  spent.  Something  practical  must  be  done,  and  practical- 
ity was  not  his  strong  point. 

"Friends  in  London  he  had  none;  but  for  an  occasional  conversa- 
tion with  his  landlady  he  would  scarcely  have  spoken  a  dozen  words 
in  a  week.  His  disposition  was  the  reverse  of  democratic,  and  he 
could  not  make  acquaintances  below  his  own  intellectual  level. 
SoUtude  fostered  a  sensitiveness  which  to  begin  with  was  extreme; 
the  lack  of  stated  occupation  encouraged  his  natural  tendency  to 
dream  and  procrastinate  and  hope  for  the  improbable.  He  was  a 
recluse  in  the  midst  of  millions,  and  viewed  with  dread  the  necessity 
of  going  forth  to  fight  for  daily  food." 

A  legacy  of  five  hundred  dollars  falling  to  him,  he 
spent  the  money  in  publishing  his  first  novel,  'Workers  in 
the  Dawn.'  It  was  unsuccessful,  but  incidentally  se- 
cured him  an  engagement  as  tutor  to  the  two  sons  of 
Frederic  Harrison,  to  whom  he  had  sent  a  presentation 
copy.    More  tutorial  work  was  offered  to  him,  together 


GEORGE  GISSING  101 

with  the  opportunity  of  contributing  regularly  to  the 
Tall  Mall  Gazette/  then  edited  by  John  Morley.  But 
Gissing  despised  journalism,  and  begrudged  the  time 
he  had  to  spend  on  teaching.  Though  his  real  desire 
was  not  to  write,  but  to  amass  knowledge,  he  believed 
himself  capable  of  literary  work  of  the  first  order.  He 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Frederic  Harrison  in  1884: — 

"The  conditions  of  my  life  are  preposterous.  There  is  only  one 
consolation,  that,  if  I  Uve  through  it,  I  shall  have  materials  for  a 
darker  and  stronger  work  than  any  our  time  has  seen.  If  I  can  hold 
out  till  I  have  written  some  three  or  four  books,  I  shall  at  all  events 
have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  I  have  left  something  too 
individual  in  tone  to  be  neglected." 

His  early  novels  brought  him  in  about  two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  each,  and  when  'Demos'  attained  a 
second  edition  owing  to  contemporary^mterest  in  work- 
ing-class problems,  Gissing  spent  the  proceeds  on  a 
long-desired  trip  to  Italy.  "There  came  into  my  hands 
a  sum  of  money  (such  a  poor  little  sum)  for  a  book  I  had 
written.  It  was  early  autumn.  I  chanced  to  hear 
some  one  speak  of  Naples — and  only  death  would  have 
held  me  back."  For  'The  Nether  World'  (1890)  he 
received  a  thousand  dollars,  and  for  'New  Grub  Street' 
(1891)  a  little  more;  but  in  this  year  Gissing  yielded  to 
another  of  those  mad  impulses  which  would  ruin  the 
lives  of  the  most  gifted.  His  wife  was  dead  and  he 
was  unable  to  endure  the  loneliness  in  which  he  lived. 
"I  could  stand  it  no  longer,"  he  said  at  the  time  to  Mor- 
ley Roberts,  "so  I  rushed  out  and  spoke  to  the  very  first 
woman  I  came  across."  She  happened  to  be  a  girl  of  no 
education  or  natural  attractiveness  and  a  bitter  scold — 
H.  G.  Wells,  who  knew  her,  describes  her  as  a  "poor, 


1 


102  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

tormented,  miserable,  angry  servant  girl" — but  in  spite 
of  all  warnings  Gissing  married  her.  To  the  remon- 
strances of  his  friends,  who  urged  that  he  was  making 
"an  unpardonable  fool  of  himself  in  marrying  so  much 
beneath  him;  that  he  might  well  have  waited  until  his 
income  improved,"  he  offered  the  same  justification  that 
he  pleaded  for  one  of  his  characters  in  'New  Grub 
Street':— 

■y^  "This  was  all  very  well,  but  they  might  just  as  reasonably  have 
bidden  him  reject  plain  food  because  a  few  years  hence  he  would  be 
able  to  purchase  luxuries;  he  could  not  do  without  nourishment  of 
some  sort,  and  the  time  had  come  when  he  could  not  do  without  a 
wife.  Many  a  man  with  brains  but  no  money  has  been  compelled 
to  the  same  step.  Educated  girls  have  a  pronounced  distaste  for 
London  garrets;  not  one  in  fifty  thousand  would  share  poverty  with 
the  brightest  genius  ever  born.  Seeing  that  marriage  is  so  often  in- 
dispensable to  that  very  success  which  would  enable  a  man  of  parts 
to  mate  equally,  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to  look  below  one's  own 
level,  and  be  grateful  to  the  untaught  woman  w-ho  has  pity  on  one's 
loneliness." 

The  result  in  Gissing' s  case  was  what  might  have  been 
expected,  and  after  two  children  had  been  born  there 
came  the  inevitable  separation. 

A  few  years  before  his  death  Gissing  formed  a  third 
tie  with  a  French  lady,  a  woman  of  education  and  re- 
finement whose  acquaintance  he  made  through  her  offer 
to  translate  one  of  his  novels.  He  went  to  live  in  the 
South  of  France,  and  here  at  last  he  found  a  short  period 
of  happiness.  Relinquishing  his  realistic  studies  of  the 
poor  and  his  psychological  analyses  of  struggling  souls 
"well-educated,  fairly  bred,  but  without  money,"  he 
wrote  a  volume  of  autobiographical  essays  'The  Private 
Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft,'  and  a  romance  of  humble  life 


GEORGE  GISSING  103 

'T'filLWarhurton' ;  he  left  unfinished  at  his  death  'Ver- 
anilda/  a  historical  novel  describing  Roman  society  in 
the  fifth  century,  a  period  in  which  he  had  long  been 
interested  and  about  which  he  had  been  planning  a  book 
for  some  twenty  years. 

It  is  clear  that  Gissing's  temperament  was  as  pecuUar 
as  the  circumstances  of  his  life,  which  were  due  indeed  in 
large  part  to  defects  of  character.  He  disliked  teach- 
ing; he  disliked  writing,  and  if  he  had  had  the  fortune 
he  desired  he  would  probably  have  lived  and  died  an  un- 
productive scholar.  Only  the  direst  necessity  drove 
him  to  hterary  composition.  What  Gissing  complained 
of  was  not  lack  of  appreciation,  but  "the  accursed  struggle 
for  money."  "It  amazes  me,'-'  he  wrote  within  five  years 
of  his  death,  "that  a  man  secure  from  penury  should 
lament  the  failure  of  his  work  to  become  popular."  He 
did  not  write  easily — "not  a  line  that  does  not  ask  sweat 
of  the  brain";  and  if,  like  Coleridge,  he  could  have  found 
a  Gillman  to  lodge  him  and  board  him  for  nothing,  he 
would  never  have  touched  a  pen  again.  His  one  desire 
was  to  "pass  my  days  in  a  garden,  or  by  the  fireside, 
merely  reading.  Now  and  then  I  have  such  a  hunger 
for  books  that  I  loathe  the  work  which  forbids  me  to  fall 
upon  them."  So  he  declared  towards  the  end  of  his 
life,  and  at  the  beginning  of  his  career  he  spent  days  at 
the  British  Museum,  with  a  crust  for  breakfast  and 
another  crust  for  dinner,  reading  Ancient  Philosophy, 
"Apuleius  and  Lucian,  Petronius  and  the  Greek  An- 
thology, Diogenes  Laertius  and — heaven  knows  what!" 
At  the  age  of  twenty-four  he  jotted  down  a  Hst  of  "things 
I  hope  to  know,  and  to  know  well,"  including  such 
"modest"  items  as  "the  history  of  the  Christian  Church 


104  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

up  to  the  Reformation,"  "all  Greek  poetry,"  "the  field 
of  Mediaeval  Romance,"  "German  literature  from  Less- 
ing  to  Heine,"  and  "Dante."  From  these  congenial 
studies,  out  of  which  it  was  obviously  impossible  to  make 
money  by  way  of  publication,  Gissing  turned  to  stories 
of  working-class  Ufe — not  that  he  really  Uked  the  people, 
or  was  interested  in  social  questions.  He  says  himself: 
"I  am  no  friend  of  the  people.  .  .  .  Every  instinct 
of  my  being  is  anti-democratic."  But  he  had  to  write, 
and  what  was  he  to  wri.te  about?  As  he  feared  and  dis- 
trusted Demos,  he  hated  and  feared  Science  as  "the 
remorseless  enemy  of  mankind."  He  wrote  in  passion- 
ate words  to  which  later  history  has  given  the  tone  of 
prophecy: — 

"I  see  it  destroying  all  simplicity  and  gentleness  of  life,  all  the 
beauty  of  the  world;  I  see  it  restoring  barbarism  under  a  mask  of 
civilization;  I  see  it  darkening  men's  minds  and  hardening  their 
hearts;  I  see  it  bringing  a  time  of  vast  conflicts,  which  will  pale  into 
insignificance  'the  thousand  wars  of  old,'  and,  as  likely  as  not,  will 
whelm  all  the  laborious  advances  of  mankind  in  blood-drenched 
chaos." 

While  the  scientific  movement  of  his  time  moved  him 
only  to  wrath,  and  he  was  far  from  accepting  the  mech- 
anistic theory  of  the  evolutionist,  he  had  an  equally 
violent  antagonism  to  orthodox  Christianity;  the  por- 
traits of  clergymen  in  his  novels  are  invariably  unsym- 
pathetic and  sometimes  prejudiced.  He  emerged  from 
an  extensive  study  of  Greek  and  German  philosophers 
without  any  philosophy  of  life  beyond  a  vague  agnos- 
ticism.    He  writes: — 

"That  there  is  some  order,  some  pxupose,  seems  a  certainty;  my 
mind,  at  all  events,  refuses  to  grasp  an  idea  of  a  Universe  which 


GEORGE  GISSING  105 

means  nothing  at  all.  But  just  as  unable  am  I  to  accept  any  of  the 
solutions  ever  proposed.  Above  all  it  is  the  existence  of  natural 
beauty  which  haunts  my  thought.  I  can,  for  a  time,  forget  the 
world's  horrors;  I  can  never  forget  the  flower  by  the  wayside  and  the 
sun  falhng  in  the  west.  These  things  have  a  meaning — but  I  doubt, 
I  doubt — whether  the  mind  of  man  wiU  ever  be  permitted  to  know  it." 

So  far  as  he  had  a  creed  at  all,  it  may  be  described  as  a 
mild  pessimism.  "Art,  nowadays,"  he  says  in  his 
second  novel,  'The  Unclassed,'  "must  be  the  mouthpiece 
of  misery,  for  misery  is  the  keynote  of  modern  life." 
He  was  acquainted  with  the  work  pf  the  French  realists, 
Flaubert,  Maupassant,  and  Zola,  but  he  had  neither  the 
artistic  detachment  of  the  first  two,  nor  the  moral  and 
social  indignation  of  the  third.  He  was  quick  to  discern 
the  difference  between  Zola's  practice  and  his  precepts. 
"Zola,"  he  says,  "writes  deliberate  tragedies;  his  vilest 
figures  become  heroic  from  the  place  they  fill  in  a  strongly 
imagined  drama."  Zola's  theory  of  observation  and  ex- 
periment seems  to  have  appealed  to  Gissing,  for  in  his 
third  novel,  'Isobel  Clarendon,'  he  sets  forth  something 
very  like  it  as  his  method : — 

"He  who  is  giving  these  chapters  of  her  history  may  not  pretend 
to  do  much  more  than  exhibit  facts  and  draw  at  times  justifiable 
inference.  He  is  not  a  creator  of  himian  beings,  with  eyes  to  behold 
the  very  heart  of  the  machine  he  has  himself  pieced  together;  merely 
one  who  takes  trouble  to  trace  certain  lines  of  human  experience,  and, 
working  here  on  grounds  of  knowledge,  there  by  aid  of  analogy,  here 
again  in  the  way  of  colder  speculation,  spins  his  tale  with  what  skill 
he  may  till  the  threads  are  used  up." 

But  there  is  a  marked  contrast  in  the  confidence — • 
one  might  say  the  wrongheaded  confidence — with  which 
Zola  sets  forth  his  theory,  and  the  modesty — almost 
amounting    to    discouragement — with    which    Gissing 


106  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

presents  his  view  of  his  own  work.  What  he  seems  to  have 
had  in  mind  when  he  began  to  write  novels  was  the  aim 
he  ascribes  to  Harold  Bififen — "absolute  realism  in  the 
sphere  of  the  ignobly  decent."  Speaking  of  a  love-scene 
he  had  overheard  in  Regent's  Park,  Biff  en  says : — 

"Now,  such  a  love-scene  as  that  has  absolutely  never  been  written 
down;  it  was  entirely  decent,  yet  vulgar  to  the  nth  power.  Dickens 
would  have  made  it  ludicrous — a  gross  injustice.  Other  men  who 
deal  with  low-class  life  would  perhaps  have  preferred  idealising  it — 
an  absurdity.  For  my  own  part,  I  am  going  to  reproduce  it  verbatim, 
without  one  single  impertinent  suggestion  of  any  point  of  view  save 
that  of  honest  reporting.  The  result  will  be  something  unutterably 
tedious.  Precisely.  That  is  the  stamp  of  the  ignobly  decent  life. 
If  it  were  anything  bui  tedious  it  would  be  untrue." 

In  his  earUer  novels  he  depicts  the  life  of  the  poor 
with  scrupulous  fideHty,  finding  his  material  in  his  en- 
forced contact  with  them,  and  in  visits,  after  the  manner 
Zola  recommended  and  practised,  to  slums  and  police 
courts.  It  was  conscientious  work  in  the  artistic  sense, 
but  lacking  in  sympathy  and  power  of  imagination,  and 
there  is  in  it  neither  faith  nor  hope.  Gissing  "thought 
nothing  could  be  done"  about  the  misery  he  represented, 
and  he  "did  not  desire  to  do  it."  It  is  no  wonder  that  he 
found  no  real  satisfaction  in  it,  and  that  his  manner 
changed  to  that  of  "a  psychological  realist  in  the  sphere 
of  culture" — the  manner  of  Reardon,  who  is  the  nearest 
of  the  struggling  authors  in  'New  Grub  Street'  to  being 
Gissing  himself.  Biffen,  who  embodies  Gissing's  earUer 
self,  says  to  Reardon : — 

"What  are  we — ^you  and  I?  We  have  no  beUef  in  inmiortality; 
we  are  convinced  that  this  life  is  all;  we  know  that  human  happi- 
ness is  the  origin  and  end  of  all  moral  considerations.  What  right 
have  we  to  make  ourselves  and  others  miserable  for  the  sake  of  an 


GEORGE  GISSING  107 

obstinate  idealism?  It  is  our  duty  to  make  the  best  of  circumstances. 
Why  will  you  go  cutting  your  loaf  with  a  razor  when  you  have  a 
serviceable  bread-knife?" 

But  Gissing,  like  Reardon,  while  he  was  driven  to  write 
for  money,  was  always  striving  to  satisfy  his  artistic 
conscience.  Like  Reardon,  as  Morley  Roberts  tells  us, 
he  would  begin  a  novel  over  and  over  again,  tearing  up 
the  early  chapters  because  he  felt  he  could  not  go  on — 
"endless  circling,  perpetual  beginning,  followed  by  frus- 
tration." 

Gissing's  views  of  art  were  not  always  the  same.  It  is 
surprising  to  find  him  at  the  end  of  his  life  defining  art 
in  'The  Private  Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft'  as  "an  ex- 
pression, satisfying  and  abiding,  of  the  zest  of  life." 
His  theory,  as  it  is  here  presented,  presents  a  curious  con- 
trast to  his  previous  practice: — "The  artist  is  moved  and 
inspired  by  supreme  enjoyment  of  some  aspect  of  the 
world  about  him;  an  enjoyment  in  itself  keener  than  that 
experienced  by  another  man,  and  intensified,  prolonged, 
by  the  power — which  comes  to  him  we  know  not  how — of 
recording  in  visible  or  audible  form  that  emotion  of  rare 
vitality."  Gissing  does  convey,  in  his  too  rare  passages 
of  description,  his  delight  in  natural  beauty  of  scene,  and 
his  growing  love  of  trees,  birds,  and  flowers;  but  the 
"zest  of  life,"  in  any  broad  sense,  was  a  thing  he  never 
knew.  He  realized,  however,  that  "the  artist  ought  to  be 
able  to  make  material  out  of  his  own  sufferings,  even 
while  the  suffering  is  still  at  its  height."  And  out  of  his 
own  sufferings  he  did  eventually  maTce  a  great  novel, 
'New  Gpib  Street'  (1891).  It  is  in  the  main  the  story 
under  a  thin  disguise  of  his  own  sufferings.  Reardon, 
the  scholar,  driven  to  write  for  money,  Biffen,  the  con- 


\ 


108  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

scientious  realist,  Alfred  Yule,  the  unsuccessful  author, 
burdened  and  irritated  with  an  ignorant  wife — they  are 
all  himself,  regarded  from  different  points  of  view,  and 
in  the  case  of  Reardon  the  parallel  is  remarkably  close. 
It  is  really  his  own  cause  he  is  pleading,  and  in  one  pass- 
age he  pleads  it  almost  directly : — 

"The  chances  are  that  you  have  neither  understanding  nor  sym- 
pathy for  men  such,  as  Edwin  Reardon  and.  Harold  Biff  en.  They 
merely  provoke  you.  They  seem  to  you  inert,  flabby,  weakly  en- 
vious, foolishly  obstinate,  impiously  mutinous,  and  many  other 
things.  You  are  made  angrily  contemptuous  by  their  failure  to  get 
on;  why  don't  they  bestir  themselves,  push  and  bustle,  welcome 
kicks  so  long  as  halfpence  follow,  make  place  in  the  world's  eye — • 
in  short,  take  a  leaf  from  the  book  of  Mr.  Jasper  Milvain? 

"But  try  to  imagine  a  personality  wholly  unfitted  for  the  rough 
and  tumble  of  the  world's  labour-market.  From  the  familiar  point 
of  view  these  men  were  worthless;  view  them  in  possible  relation  to 
a  humane  order  of  society,  and  they  are  admirable  citizens.  Noth- 
ing is  easier  than  to  condemn  a  type  of  character  which  is  unequal 
to  the  coarse  demands  of  life  as  it  suits  the  average  man.  These 
two  were  richly  endowed  with  the  kindly  and  the  imaginative  vir- 
tues; if  fate  threw  them  amid  incongruous  circumstances,  is  their 
endowment  of  less  value?  You  scorn  their  passivity;  but  it  was 
their  nature  and  their  merit  to  be  passive.  Gifted  with  independent 
means,  each  of  them  would  have  taken  quite  a  different  aspect  in 
your  eyes.  The  sum  of  their  faults  was  their  inability  to  earn  money; 
but,  indeed,  that  inability  does  not  call  for  unmingled  disdain." 

The  direct  plea  is  perhaps  unconvincing,  but  the  book 
as  a  whole  is,  unlike  Gissing's  previous  work,  not  so 
much  described  as  felt.  It  is  a  painful  and  depressing 
picture  of  the  life  of  the  unsuccessful  man  of  letters,  but 
its  power  is  unmistakable.  The  successful  authors  of 
'New  Grub  Street'  are  more  thinly  reahzed,  and  so  are 
the  women,  with  the  significant  exception  of  the  literary 
hack,  Marian  Yule,  who  in  the  famiUar  atmosphere  of  the 


GEORGE  GISSING  109 

British  Museum  Reading  Room,  thinks  the  thoughts 
which  must  have  occurred,  in  some  hour  of  more  than 
ordinary  discouragement,  to  Gissing  in  his  own  person : — 

"One  day  at  the  end  of  the  month  she  sat  with  books  open  before 
her,  but  by  no  effort  could  fix  her  attention  upon  them.  It  was 
gloomy,  and  one  could  scarcely  see  to  read;  a  taste  of  fog  grew  per- 
ceptible in  the  warm,  headachy  air.  Such  profound  discouragement 
possessed  her  that  she  could  not  even  maintain  the  pretence  of 
study;  heedless  whether  anyone  observed  her,  she  let  her  hands  fall 
and  her  head  droop.  She  kept  asking  herself  what  was  the  use  and 
purpose  of  such  a  life  as  she  was  condemned  to  lead.  When  already 
there  was  more  good  literature  in  the  world  than  any  mortal  could 
cope  with  in  his  lifetime,  here  was  she  exhausting  herself  in  the  manu- 
facture of  printed  stuff  which  no  one  even  pretended  to  be  more  than 
a  commodity  for  the  day's  market.  What  unspeakable  folly!  To 
write — was  not  that  the  joy  and  the  privilege  of  one  who  had  an  ur- 
gent message  for  the  world?  Her  father,  she  knew  well,  had  no 
such  message;  he  had  abandoned  all  thought  of  original  production, 
and  only  wrote  about  writing.  She  herself  would  throw  away  her 
pen  with  joy  but  for  the  need  of  earning  money.  And  all  these 
people  about  her,  what  aim  had  they  save  to  make  new  books  out  of 
those  already  existing,  that  yet  newer  books  might  in  turn  be  made 
out  of  theirs?  This  huge  library,  growing  into  unwieldiness,  threat- 
ening to  become  a  trackless  desert  of  print — how  intolerably  it 
weighed  upon  the  spirit! 

"Oh,  to  go  forth  and  labour  with  one's  hands,  to  do  any  poorest, 
commonest  work  of  which  the  world  had  tnily  need!  It  was  ignoble 
to  sit  here  and  support  the  paltry  pretence  of  intellectual  dignity. 
A  few  days  ago  her  startled  eye  had  caught  an  advertisement  in  the 
newspaper,  headed  'Literary  Machine';  had  it  then  been  invented 
at  last,  some  automaton  to  supply  the  place  of  such  poor  creatures 
as  herself,  to  turn  out  books  and  articles?  Alas!  the  machine  was 
only  one  for  holding  volumes  conveniently,  that  the  work  of  literary 
manufacture  might  be  physically  lightened.  But  surely  before 
long  some  Edison  would  make  the  true  automaton;  the  problem 
must  be  comparatively  such  a  simple  one.  Only  to  throw  in  a  given 
number  of  old  books,  and  have  them  reduced,  blended,  modernised 
into  a  single  one  for  to-day's  consimiption." 


110  ENGLISH  LITERATUEE 

In  general  Gissing  had  a  low  estimate  of  women  and 
no  real  acquaintance  with  them.  What  opportunity  for 
real  acquaintance  did  his  narrow  life  afford?  In  his 
next  book,  'Born  in  Exile,'  another  reminiscent  study 
beginning  with  an  elaborate  account  of  prize  day  at  the 
Owens  College  during  the  time  Gissing  was  a  student 
there,  the  hero  (really  again  Gissing  himself)  is  described 
as  "one  of  those  upon  whose  awaking  instinct  is  forced 
a  perception  of  the  brain-defect  so  general  in  women  when 
they  are  taught  few  of  Ufe's  graces  and  none  of  its  serious 
concerns, — their  paltry  prepossessions,  their  vulgar  se- 
quaciousness,  their  invincible  ignorance,  their  absorption 
in  a  petty  self."  With  much  less  grip  upon  the  reader's 
attention  than  'New  Grub  Street,'  'Born  in  Exile'  is  of 
considerable  interest  as  a  novel  of  self-revelation.  Pri- 
marily, as  the  title  indicates,  it  sets  forth  Gissing's  re- 
sentment at  the  social  disquaUfications  he  suffered. 
His  hero,  Godwin  Peak,  hke  himself,  leaves  college  with- 
out a  degree,  not,  however,  through  any  fault  of  his  own, 
but  through  the  indiscretion  of  a  relative,  who  insists 
on  opening  a  cheap  restaurant  opposite  the  college 
gates.  Peak  suffers,  as  Gissing  suffered,  among  the 
London  vulgar,  whom  he  "abominates,  root  and  branch," 
and  holds  "essentially  the  basest  of  English  mortals." 
It  is  not  of  the  vicious  he  speaks  but  of  the  "ignobly 
decent"  lower  classes: — 

"The  people  who  earn  enough  for  their  needs,  and  whose  spiritual 
guide  is  the  Sunday  newspaper — I  knew  them,  because  for  a  long 
time  I  was  obliged  to  lodge  in  their  houses.  Only  a  consuming  fire 
could  purify  the  places  where  they  dwell.  Don't  misunderstand 
me;  I  am  not  charging  them  with  what  are  commonly  held  vices 
and  crimes,  but  with  the  consistent  love  of  everjrthing  that  is  ig- 
noble, with  utter  deadness  to  generous  impulse,  with  the  fatal  habit 


GEORGE  GISSING  111 

of  low  mockery.  And  these  are  the  people  who  really  direct  the 
democratic  movement.  They  set  the  tone  in  politics;  they  are  de- 
basing art  and  literatm-e;  even  the  homes  of  wealthy  people  begin  to 
show  the  effects  of  their  influence.  One  hears  men  and  women  of 
gentle  birth  using  phrases  which  originate  with  shopboys;  one  sees 
them  reading  print  which  is  addressed  to  the  coarsest  million.  They 
crowd  to  entertainments  which  are  deliberately  adapted  to  the  lowest 
order  of  mind.  When  commercial  interest  is  supreme,  how  can  the 
tastes  of  the  majority  fail  to  lead  and  control?" 

One  would  have  to  search  far  for  a  more  uncompromis- 
ing expression  of  the  anti-democratic  faith,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  it  was  held  as  fervently  and  vehemently  by  Gis- 
sing  himself  as  he  says  it  was  by  Peak.  With  the  whole 
democratic  movement  he  is  entirely  out  of  sympathy: — 
"A  ludicrous  pretence  of  education  is  banishing  every 
form  of  native  simplicity.  In  the  large  towns,  the 
populace  sink  deeper  and  deeper  into  a  vicious  vulgarity, 
and  every  rural  district  is  being  affected  by  the  spread  of 
contagion.  To  flatter  the  proletariat  is  to  fight  against 
all  the  good  that  still  characterises  educated  England — 
against  reverence  for  the  beautiful,  against  magna- 
nimity, against  enthusiasm  of  mind,  heart,  and  soul." 
Peak  "hates  the  very  word  majority;  it  is  the  few,  the 
very  few,  that  have  always  kept  alive  whatever  of 
effectual  good  we  see  in  the  human  race.  There  are 
individuals  who  outweigh,  in  every  kind  of  value,  genera- 
tions of  ordinary  people."  Such  an  individual  he  be- 
lieves himself  to  be,  and  his  grievance  is  not  against  the 
social  system — he  believes  in  it  firmly — but  merely 
against  his  own  place  in  it.  Again  we  have  a  remi- 
niscence which  is  obviously  Gissing's  own  experience: — 

"He  chanced  once  to  be  in  Hyde  Park,  on  the  occasion  of  some 
public  ceremony,  and  was  brought  to  pause  at  the  edge  of  a  gaping 


112  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

plebeian  crowd,  drawn  up  to  witness  the  passing  of  aristocratic  ve- 
hicles. Close  in  front  of  him  an  open  carriage  came  to  a  stop;  in 
it  sat,  or  rather  reclined,  two  ladies,  old  and  yoimg.  Upon  this 
picture  Grodwin  fixed  his  eyes  with  the  intensity  of  fascination;  his 
memory  never  lost  the  impress  of  these  ladies'  faces.  Nothing  very 
noteworthy  about  them;  but  to  Godwin  they  conveyed  a  passionate 
perception  of  all  that  is  implied  in  social  superiority.  Here  he  stood, 
one  of  the  miJtitude,  of  the  herd;  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  boors 
and  pickpockets;  and  within  reach  of  his  hand  reposed  those  two 
ladies,  in  Olympian  calm,  seeming  unaware  even  of  the  existence  of 
the  throng.  Now  they  exchanged  a  word;  now  they  smiled  to  each 
other.  How  delicate  was  the  moving  of  their  lips !  How  fine  must 
be  their  enimciation!  On  the  box  sat  an  old  coachman  and  a  young 
footman;  they  too  were  splendidly  impassive,  scornful  of  the  mul- 
titudinous gaze. — The  block  was  relieved,  and  on  the  carriage  rolled. 

"They  were  his  equals,  those  ladies;  merely  his  equals.  With 
such  as  they  he  should  by  right  of  nature  associate. 

"In  his  rebelUon,  he  could  not  hate  them.  He  hated  the  malo- 
dorous rabble  who  stared  insolently  at  them  and  who  envied  their 
immeasurable  remoteness.  Of  mere  wealth  he  thought  not;  might 
he  only  be  recognized  by  the  gentle  of  birth  and  breeding  for  what 
he  really  was,  and  be  rescued  from  the  promiscuity  of  the  vulgar!" 

Peak  avows  that  he  respects  hereditary  social  stand- 
ing, independently  of  the  individual's  qualities.  "Birth 
in  a  sphere  of  refinement  is  desirable  and  respectable; 
it  saves  one,  absolutely,  from  many  forms  of  coarseness. 
The  masses  are  not  only  fools,  but  very  near  the  brutes. 
Yes,  they  can  send  forth  fine  individuals—but  remain 
base." 

Feeling  himself  "an  aristocrat  of  nature's  own  mak- 
ing— one  of  the  few  highly  favoured  beings  who,  in 
despite  of  circumstance,  are  pinnacled  above  mankind," 
Peak  as  a  boy  visioned  for  himself  a  triumphant  career, 
with  no  lack  of  faith  in  his  power  to  become  an  aristocrat 
in  the  common  sense,  as  he  already  felt  himself  "an 


GEORGE  GISSING  113 

aristocrat  de  jure."  His  independent  temper  and  in- 
tellectual maturity  save  him  from  the  temptations  to 
which  Gissing  himself  fell  a  victim  and  to  which  he  makes 
one  significant  reference: — "A  youth  of  less  concentrated 
purpose,  more  at  the  mercy  of  casual  allurement,  would 
probably  have  gone  to  wreck  amid  trials  so  exceptional." 
Gissing  endows  his  hero  with  a  colder  nature,  with 
more  practical  ability,  and  more  constancy  of  purpose 
than  he  had  himself;  but  Peak  is  none  the  less  a  victim 
of  circumstance.  He  earns  a  decent  living  in  the  em- 
ployment of  a  London  chemical  manufacturer,  travels 
abroad,  and  determines  to  marry  a  woman  of  gentle 
birth  and  education.  It  is  in  this  way  that  temptation 
comes  to  him,  and  he  falls,  committing  an  act,  not  of 
material,  but  of  intellectual  dishonesty  by  professing  an 
intention  to  become  a  clergyman  when  he  is  really  an 
agnostic.  The  falsity  of  his  position  is  revealed,  and 
though  Sid  well  Warricombe,  the  woman  for  whose  sake 
he  has  lied,  is  willing  to  forgive  him,  her  social  position 
separates  her  from  him,  even  when  an  unexpected  legacy 
places  Peak  in  a  position  to  offer  her  a  not  unequal 
alliance.  He  dies  as  he  has  lived  "in  exile,"  conscious 
not  so  much  that  "dishonour  still  chngs  to  him"  for  his 
past  duplicity  as  that  the  disqualification  of  his  origin  is 
irremediable.  On  none  of  the  counts  suggested  is  the 
case  Gissing  presents  convincing.  A  man  of  Peak's 
native  ability  and  education,  provided  with  a  sufficient 
income,  would  have  found  the  life  he  desired  open  to  him 
in  the  England  of  the  eighties,  and  it  is  inconceivable 
that  a  woman  really  in  love  would  have  rejected  him  for 
reasons  so  insufficient.  But  Gissing  had  no  realization, 
as  he  had  no  experience,  of  the  compelling  emotion  in- 


114  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

volving  the  whole  nature,  which  overcomes  easily  such 
small  obstacles  as  are  here  suggested.  Godwin  Peak 
analyses  his  own  state  of  mind  desperately  and  exhaust- 
ively before  he  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that  he  is  really 
in  love,  and  his  letters  to  Sidwell  convey  no  spark  of 
real  passion — they  are  excellently  reasoned,  but  cold  as 
ice.  Lack  of  experience,  lack  of  sympathy,  prevented 
Gissing  from  writing  a  love-story,  which  'Born  in  Exile,' 
in  its  main  intention,  purposed  to  be.  Gissing  only  felt 
himself  a  free  spirit  when  he  was  momentarily  relieved 
"from  the  temptations  and  harassings  of  sexual  emotion," 
and  he  adds,  very  significantly,  "What  we  call  love  is 
mere  turmoil."  In  a  more  reflective  passage  he  echoes 
Flaubert's  protest  against  romanticism: — 

"If  every  novelist  could  be  strangled  and  thrown  into  the  sea  we 
should  have  some  chance  of  reforming  women.  The  girl's  nature 
was  corrupted  with  sentimentality,  like  that  of  all  but  every  woman 
who  is  intelligent  enough  to  read  what  is  called  the  best  fiction,  but 
not  intelligent  enough  to  understand  its  vice.  Love — love — love; 
a  sickening  sameness  of  vulgarity.  What  is  more  vulgar  than  the 
ideal  of  novelists?  They  won't  represent  the  actual  world;  it 
would  be  too  dull  for  their  readers.  In  real  life,  how  many  men  and 
women  fall  in  love?  Not  one  in  every  ten  thousand,  I  am  convinced. 
Not  one  married  pair  in  ten  thousand  have  felt  for  each  other  as  two 
or  three  couples  do  in  every  novel.  There  is  the  sexual  instinct,  of 
course,  but  that  is  quite  a  different  thing;  the  novelist  daren't  talk 
about  that.  The  paltry  creatures  daren't  tell  the  one  truth  that 
would  be  profitable.  The  result  is  that  women  imagine  themselves 
noble  and  glorious  when  they  are  most  near  the  animals." 

Granted  that  the  grande  passion  is  as  rare  as  Gissing 
here  makes  out,  it  exists,  and  he  nowhere  succeeded  in 
portraying  it.  He  attempted  it  in  a  later  novel,  'The 
Crown  of  Life,'  but  it  is  a  failure.  And  Gissing  is  of 
course  very  wide  of  the  mark  when  he  suggests,  as  he 


GEORGE  GISSING  115 

does  in  the  passage  above  quoted,  that  among  ten  thou- 
sand women  who  imagine  themselves  in  love,  all  but  the 
solitary  exception  are  mere  victims  of  sexual  instinct. 
There  is  that  element,  of  course,  in  all  passion,  but  in  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  the  only  element  he  was  generaliz- 
ing from  his  own  exceptional  nature.  The  result  is  that 
when  he  attempts  to  describe  affectionate  women,  he 
either  idealizes  them,  as  in  'Thyrza,'  *A  Life's  Morning' 
and  Jane  Snowdon,  the  belle  fleur  who  redeems  the  dung- 
hill of  '  The  Nether  World,'  or  brutalizes  them,  or  leaves 
them  mere  lay  figures,  described  from  the  outside  with- 
out any  touch  of  life. 

Closely  allied  with  the  intense  self -consciousness  which 
is  the  source  at  once  of  Gissing's  strength  and  weakness 
is  his  lack  of  humour.  It  is  this  which  gives  to  all  his  pic- 
tures of  lower  class  and  middle  class  life  the  same  impres- 
sion of  grayness.  He  depicts  their  squalour  and  their 
material  straits,  their  sufferings  and  anxieties,  never 
their  innocent  pleasures  and  merrymakings.  In  a  holiday 
crowd  at  the  Crystal  Palace  he  sees  only  the  desolation  of 
ignorance  and  degradation.  To  Gissing  it  is  all  the  more 
dreadful  because  they  are  unconscious  of  their  own 
misery.  He  was  in  fact  incapable  of  imagining  happi- 
ness outside  of  his  own  ideal  of  material  comfort  and 
intellectual  opportunity.  The  courage  and  cheerfulness 
of  the  poor,  the  humour  with  which  they  accept  dis- 
comfort and  their  readiness  to  enjoy  any  alleviation  of 
their  toil  lie  beyond  his  ken. 

This  being  so,  it  is  surprising  that  his  critical  study  of 
Dickens,  who  knew  the  poor  as  well  as  Gissing  and  repre- 
sented them  in  an  altogether  different  light,  should  have 
been   full   of   sympathetic  insight   and   understanding. 


I 


116  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

His  book  is  not  merely  by  far  the  best  analysis  of  the 
genius  of  Dickens,  but  is  one  of  the  finest  works  of  its 
kind  in  the  English  language.  Gissing's  appreciation 
of  the  work  of  other  men  was  always  generous,  and  he 
had  a  profound  admiration  for  his  great  Victorian 
predecessors,  except  for  George  Eliot,  whose  moral  and 
philosophical  tone  he  disliked.  He  would  have  liked, 
he  said,  to  write  a  similar  book  about  Thackeray,  and 
he  remained  a  staunch  Tennyson  devotee  when  the  wor- 
ship of  Tennyson  had  ceased  to  be  fashionable.  It  is 
to  be  regretted  that  Gissing  did  not  do  more  criticism,  for 
the  critical  remarks  interspersed  in  the  novels  are  singu- 
larly acute  and  intelUgent.  His  knowledge  of  the  world 
of  books — ^the  only  world  he  really  knew — his  vigorous 
mind,  and  his  somewhat  severe  but  careful  and  luminous 
style  made  him  an  admirable  critic. 

It  is  interesting  to  speculate  on  what  Gissing  would 
have  accomplished  in  literature  if  he  had  had  the 
easy  circumstances  he  coveted.  Perhaps  nothing.  His 
latest  work,  done  in  comparative  comfort  and  freedom 
from  anxiety,  is  somewhat  lacking  in  intellectual  vigour, 
possibly  owing  to  his  faiUng  health.  Though  'By  the 
Ionian  Sea,'  'The  Private  Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft,' 
'Will  Warburton,'  and  'Veranilda'  are  all  pleasantly 
written,  they  have  not  the  grip  and  power  of  'New 
Grub  Street.'  Perhaps  the  fact  is  that  he  succeeHed 
not' in  spite  of  but  because  of  his  sufferings.  His  early 
ambition  to  write  "something  too  individual  in  tone  to  be 
neglected  "  was  not  frustrated.  He  eventually  triumphed 
over  all  obstacles,  even  those  which  he  had  himself 
created,  he  was  never  false  to  his  own  artistic  standards, 
and  his  work,  though  Ukely  never  to  win  wide  attention, 


GEOEGE  GISSING  117 

will  always  be  valued  by  those  able  to  appreciate  his  in- 
tellectual honesty  and  vigour  and  his  self-sacrificing  de- 
votion to  scholarly  and  literary  ideals.  It  is  the  audience 
he  would  himself  have  desired,  and  the  place  allotted  to 
him,  above  all  but  the  very  few  great  masters  of  his  time, 
would  not  have  disappointed  his  own  mature  judgment 
of  his  powers  and  achievement. 


118  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1880  'Workers  in  the  Dawn.' 

1884  'TheUnclassed.' 

^  1886  '  Isabel  Clarendon.' 
'Demos.' 

.  1887  'Thyrza.' 

^  1888  'A  Life's  Morning.' 

1889  '  The  Nether  World.' 

y  1890  '  The  Emancipated.' 

/     1891  'New  Grub  Street.' 

1892  'Bom  in  Exile.' 

y^  '  Denzil  Quarrier.' 

^  1893  '  The  Odd  Women.' 

1894  '  In  the  Year  of  Jubilee.' 

1895  'Eve's  Ransom.' 
^1897  'The  Whirlpool.' 

^    1898  'Charles  Dickens:  A  Critical  Study.' 

^1899  '  The  Crown  of  Life.' 

1901  '  By  the  Ionian  Sea.     Notes  of  a  Ramble  in  Southern  Italy.' 
'Our  Friend  the  Charlatan.' 

1903  '  The  Private  Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft.' 

1904  'Veranilda.' 

1905  'WillWarburton.' 

1906  '  The  House  of  Cobwebs  and  other  Stories.' 

BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  CRITICAL 

Frank  Swinnerton, '  George  Gissing,  A  Critical  Study,'  1912. 
Morley  Roberts, '  The  Private  Life  of  Henry  Maitland,'  1912. 
Edward  Clodd, '  Memories,'  1916. 

Introductions  by  Frederic  Harrison  to  '  Veranilda'  and  by  Thomas 
Seccombe  to  '  The  House  of  Cobwebs,'  1906. 

Articles  by  A.  S.  Wilkins  in  the  '  Owens  College  Union  Magazine, 
January,  1904;  by  H.  G.  Wells  in  the  '  Monthly  Review,'  August* 
1904;  and  by  Austin  Harrison  in  the  'Nineteenth  Century,'  Sep- 
tember, 1906.  ■-  „ 


CHAPTER  VII 

GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW  (1856-    ) 


/ 


Bernard  Shaw  is  regarded  by  many  of  his  admirers 
as  nothing  if  not  original,  and  even  the  few  who  still  decry 
him  as  a  mere  turner  of  paradoxes  are  at  a  loss  to  explain 
the  literary  genesis  of  his  wit.  He  himself — no  doubt, 
rightly — dismissed  the  "vague  cacklings  about  Ibsen  and 
Nietzsche,"  and  acknowledged  his  indebtedness  to  Sam- 
uel Butler's  "extraordinarily  fresh,  free,  and  future- 
piercing  suggestions."  In  Hterature,  no  man  is,  to  use 
Butler's  phrase,  "a,  born  orphan,"  like  Melchisedec,  and 
Shaw's  suggestion  as  to  his  literary  parentage  may  be 
extended  beyond  the  two  points  he  specified — "the  neces- 
sity and  morality  of  a  conscientious  Laodiceanism  in 
religion  and  of  an  earnest  and  constant  sense  of  the  im- 
portance of  money."  Shaw's  attitude  of  antagonism  not 
only  to  religious,  but  to  scientific  orthodoxy,  his  insistence 
on  the  factor  of  health  as  of  primary  importance  in  mar- 
riage, his  scorn  of  parental  authority  were  all  anticipated 
by  Butler,  who  has  the  same  fondness  for  epigram  and 
paradox,  and  is,  like  Shaw,  the  master  of  a  brilliant  style, 
especially  in  the  exposition  of  an  unpopular  point  of  view. 
But  while  Butler  was,  Hke  another  famous  forerunner, 
"the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness,"  Shaw  quickly 
won  pubUc  attention.  It  was  not  merely  that  a  new 
generation  had  sprung  up,  eager  for  revolutionary  doc- 
trine; unlike  Butler,  Shaw  was  not  at  all  averse  to  prac- 
tising the  noble  art  of  self-advertisement;  he  had  a  keen 

119 


120  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

interest  in  and  soon  acquired  a  competent  knowledge  of 
public  affairs,  which  his  great  predecessor  neither  pro- 
fessed nor  desired. 

Shaw's  literary  beginnings  were  by  no  means  pro- 
pitious. He  was  born  in  Dublin  of  Enghsh  Protestant 
middle-class  stock.  "  I  am  a  typical  Irishman, "  he  says; 
"my  family  come  from  Yorkshire.  My  father  was  an 
ineffective,  unsuccessful  man,  in  theory  a  vehement  tee- 
totaler, but  in  practice  often  a  furtive  drinker."  His 
mother,  much  more  gifted  and  independent-minded,  left 
Dubhn  to  estabhsh  herself  as  a  successful  teacher  of  sing- 
ing in  London — a,  fact  of  cardinal  importance  in  Bernard 
Shaw's  future  career.  The  reUgious  atmosphere  of  his 
childhood — though  sometimes  enUvened  by  a  heretical 
uncle — was  narrow  and  dreary,  but  at  the  age  of  ten  he 
gave  up  going  to  church,  and  his  first  appearance  in  print 
was  a  letter  to  the  newspapers  protesting  against  the 
methods  and  doctrines  of  the  popular  religious  revivahsts, 
Moody  and  Sankey,  who  visited  Dublin  in  1875.  His 
school  days  were,  according  to  his  own  verdict  "the  most 
completely  wasted  and  mischievous  part  of  my  Ufe." 

"I  never  learnt  anything  at  School,  a  place  where  they  put  Caesar 
and  Horace  into  the  hands  of  small  boys,  and  expect  the  result  to  be 
an  elegant  taste  of  knowledge  of  the  world.  I  took  refuge  in  total 
idleness  at  school,  and  picked  up  at  home,  quite  unconsciously,  a 
knowledge  of  that  extraordinary  literature  of  modern  music,  from 
Bach  to  Wagner,  which  has  saved  me  from  being  to  the  smallest  dis- 
advantage in  competition  with  men  who  only  know  the  grammar 
and  mispronunciation  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  poets  and  philosophers. 
For  the  rest,  my  parents  went  their  own  way  and  let  me  go  mine. 
Thus  the  habit  of  freedom,  which  most  Englishmen  and  English- 
women of  my  class  never  acquire  and  never  let  their  children  acquire, 
came  to  me  naturally." 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         121 

At  fifteen  he  entered  the  office  of  a  Dublin  land-agent, 
and  stayed  there  five  years;  he  proved  a  competent  clerk, 
in  spite  of  his  heretical  opinions  and  his  devotion  to  music 
and  art,  but  it  is  not  surprising  that  life  at  a  Dubhn  desk 
was  distasteful  to  him,  and  in  1876  he  followed  his  mother 
to  London.  He  worked  for  a  while  with  the  Edison 
Telephone  Company,  but  subsisted  mainly  on  his  moth- 
er's bounty,  his  earnings  during  the  first  nine  years  by  his 
pen  amounting  to  only  six  pounds,  of  which  five  were 
paid  for  writing  the  advertisement  of  a  patent  medicine. 
These  were  the  years  of  his  novels,  of  which  the  first  was, 
''with  merciless  fitness,"  entitled  'Immaturity.'  The 
manuscript  still  remains,  partially  devoured  by  mice, 
"but  even  they  have  been  unable  to  finish  it."  The 
other  four  found  their  way  into  print  in  obscure  Socialist 
reviews,  and  have  since  been  repubhshed,  both  in  England 
and  America,  but  beyond  showing  a  turn  for  heresy  and 
paradox,  they  are  of  slight  literary  significance,  and  their 
author  has  always  refused  to  take  them  seriously.  He 
says: 

"I  recall  these  five  remote  products  of  my  nonage  as  five  heavy 
brown-paper  parcels,  which  were  always  coming  back  to  me  from 
some  publisher,  and  raising  the  very  serious  financial  question  of  the 
sixpence  to  be  paid  to  Messrs.  Carter,  Paterson  &  Company,  the 
carriers,  for  passing  them  on  to  the  jjext  publisher." 

Shaw  was  really  engaged  in  acquiring  the  education 
for  which  he  had  found  no  opportunity  in  Dublin — 
haunting  the  National  Gallery  and  the  British  Museum, 
hearing  good  music,  joining  revolutionary  societies  and 
meeting  radical  thinkers,  reading  Karl  Marx  and  Henry 
George,  speaking  at  street  corners  and  in  Hyde  Park  in 
support  of  Socialism,  vegetarianism  and  teetotalism,  and 


122  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

SO  clarifying  his  opinions  by  learning  how  to  express 
them.  He  gave  up  novel-writing  for  reasons  he  must  be 
allowed  to  explain  himself: — 

"  I  had  no  taste  for  what  is  called  '  popular  art,'  no  respect  for  popu- 
lar morality,  no  belief  in  popular  religion,  no  admiration  for  popular 
heroics.  As  an  Irishman,  I  could  pretend  to  patriotism  neither  for 
the  country  I  had  abandoned  nor  the  coimtry  that  had  ruined  it. 
As  a  humane  person  I  detested  violence  and  slaughter,  whether  in 
war,  sport,  or  the  butcher's  yard.  I  was  a  Socialist,  detesting  our 
anarchical  scramble  for  money,  and  believing  in  equality  as  the  only 
possible  permanent  basis  of  social  organization,  discipline,  subordi- 
nation, good  manners,  and  selection  of  fit  persons  for  high  functions. 
Fashionable  life,  open  on  indulgent  terms  to  unencumbered '  brilliant ' 
persons,  I  could  not  endure." 

Shaw's  next  venture  was  into  journalism,  for  which  he 
was  admirably  qualified  by  talent  and  education  and  in 
which  he  scored  a  brilliant  success,  first  as  reviewer  for 
the  'Pall  Mall  Gazette'  and  art  critic  for  the  London 
'  Worid '  ( 1 885) ,  next  as  musical  critic  for  the  '  Star '  ( 1 888- 
9),  then  in  the  same  capacity  for  the  'World'  (1890-94), 
and  finally  as  dramatic  critic  for  the  *  Saturday  Review ' 
(1895-98).  A  selection  of  his  dramatic  notices,  under 
the  title  '  Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays '  was  published 
in  New  York  with  an  admirable  preface  by  Mr.  James 
Huneker,  himself  a  very  competent  critic,  and  still  enjoys 
a  wide  circulation  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  find  in  any  language — and  impossible  in 
English — a  set  of  criticisms  which  contain  so  much  of 
permanent  value.  It  was  a  time  of  crisis  in  the  history 
of  the  London  stage,  which  was  beginning  to  emerge  from 
the  swaddling  bands  of  sentimentalism  and  conventional- 
ity. A  reviving  breath  came  from  the  Continent  in  the 
dramas  of  Ibsen,  and  Shaw  did  his  utmost  to  open  the 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         123 

mind  of  the  public  to  the  new  inspiration.  Pinero  and 
Henry  Arthur  Jones  were  writing  plays  of  compromise 
which  attempted  to  adapt  new  ideas  to  the  popular 
palate,  and  Shaw  encouraged  or  chided  them  as  he  found 
them  true  or  false  to  the  new  ideals.  The  idolatry  of 
Shakespeare,  inherited  from  the  critics  of  the  Romantic 
movement,  was  an  obstacle  to  progress,  and  Shaw  did 
his  best  to  destroy  it,  though  he  acknowledges  that 
'Othello,'  'Lear,'  and  'Macbeth'  are  masterpieces,  and 
that  Shakespeare  is  "unsurpassed  as  poet,  story-teller, 
character  draughtsman,  humourist,  and  rhetorician." 
Rightly  considered,  and  due  allowance  being  made  for 
Shaw's  love  for  the  position  of  devil's  advocate,  there  is 
little  in  his  criticisms  a  modern  Shakespeare  scholar  would 
object  to;  but  at  the  time  they  aroused  attention  by  their 
apparent  extravagance — just  what  the  author  was  aim- 
ing at — and  ultimately  they  contributed  powerfully  to  a 
juster  appreciation  of  Shakespeare's  real  genius.  Noth- 
ing is  gained  by  attributing,  even  to  masterpieces,  virtues 
they  do  not  really  possess,  and  much  of  the  Shakespeare 
worship  current  at  the  time  had  no  solid  foundation. 

Shaw  was  justly  proud  of  his  achievements  as  a  jour- 
nalist, "convinced  that  nothing  that  is  not  journalism 
will  live  long  as  literature,  or  be  of  any  use  while  it  does 
live,"  but  he  has  nothing  but  contempt  for  the  journalists 
who  profess  that  "it  is  their  duty  to  'reflect'  what  they 
believe  to  be  the  ignorance  and  prejudice  of  their  readers, 
instead  of  leading  and  enlightening  them  to  the  best  of 
their  ability."  When  Max  Nordau  gained  a  passing 
popularity  by  a  superficial  essay  on  the  degeneracy  of 
modern  art,  Shaw  took  a  holy  delight  in  reversing  his 
usual  role  and  exposing  the  fallacies  of  Nordau's  devil's 


124  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

advocacy — an  easy  task  for  Shaw,  with  his  more  thorough 
acquaintance  with  modern  music,  art,  and  hterature  and 
his  greater  command  of  invective.  This  paper,  originally 
published  in  1896  as  a  contribution  to  an  American  re- 
view, was  reprinted  in  1908  with  a  preface  and  some  revi- 
sions, and  is  one  of  Shaw's  most  characteristic  produc- 
tions. It  is  amusing  to  find  him  asserting  the  necessity 
and  usefulness  of  conventions  and  warning  the  "eman- 
cipated" young  enthusiast  who  flings  duty  and  religion, 
convention  and  parental  authority  to  the  winds  that  she 
will  find  herself  plunged  into  duties,  responsibilities  and 
sacrifices  from  which  she  may  be  glad  to  retreat  "into  the 
comparatively  loose  life  of  an  ordinary  respectable  woman 
of  fashion."  We  have  characteristic  outbreaks  by  the 
way  on  the  one  hand  against  "the  popular  conception  of 
God  as  an  omniscient,  omnipotent,  and  frightfully  jealous 
and  vindictive  old  gentleman  sitting  on  a  throne  above 
the  clouds,"  and  on  the  other  against  the  "crop  of  cheap 
syllogisms  excogitated  by  a  handful  of  raw  Rationalists 
in  their  sects  of  'Freethinkers,'  and  'Secularists'  and 
* Positivists '  and  'Don't  Knowists'  (Agnostics)."  An 
incidental  defence  of  special  pleading  throws  light  on 
Shaw's  habitual  method — "the  way  to  get  at  the  merits 
of  a  case  is  not  to  listen  to  the  fool  who  imagines  himself 
impartial,  but  to  get  it  argued  with  reckless  bias  for  and 
against."  This  explains  much  that  readers  find  discon- 
certing in  Shaw  as  mere  extravagance  and  perversity. 
But  more  significant  still  is  a  sober  and  yet  eloquent  pas- 
sage in  which  he  sets  forth  his  ideas  as  to  the  aim  of  art : — 

"  The  claim  of  art  to  our  respect  must  stand  or  fall  with  the  validity 
of  its  pretension  to  cultivate  and  refine  our  senses  and  faculties  until 
seeing,  hearing,  feeling,  smelling,  and  tasting  become  highly  conscious 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         125 

and  critical  acts  with  lis,  protesting  vehemently  against  ugUness, 
noise,  discordant  speech,  frowzy  clothing,  and  re-breathed  air,  and 
taking  keen  interest  and  pleasure  in  beauty,  in  music,  and  in  nature, 
besides  making  us  insist,  as  necessary  for  comfort  and  decency,  on 
clean,  wholesome,  handsome  fabrics  to  wear,  and  utensils  of  fine 
material  and  elegant  workmanship  to  handle.  Further,  art  should 
refine  our  sense  of  character  and  conduct,  of  justice  and  sympathy, 
greatly  heightening  our  self-knowledge,  self-control,  precision  of 
action,  and  considerateness,  and  making  us  intolerant  of  baseness, 
cruelty,  injustice,  and  intellectual  superficiality  or  vulgarity.  The 
worthy  artist  or  craftsman  is  he  who  serves  the  physical  and  moral 
senses  by  feeding  them  with  pictures,  musical  compositions,  pleasant 
houses  and  gardens,  good  clothes  and  fine  implements,  poems,  fic- 
tions, essays,  and  dramas  which  call  the  heightened  senses  and  en- 
nobled faculties  into  pleasurable  activity.  The  great  artist  is  he 
who  goes  a  step  beyond  the  demand,  and,  by  supplying  works  of  a 
higher  beauty  and  a  higher  interest  than  have  yet  been  perceived, 
succeeds,  after  a  brief  struggle  with  its  strangeness,  in  adding  this 
fresh  extension  of  sense  to  the  heritage  of  the  race." 

Associated  with  Shaw's  journalistic  activity  are  two 
books,  'The  Quintessence  of  Ibsen'  (1891)  and  'The  Per- 
fect Wagnerite'  (1898).  The  first  interprets  Ibsen  from 
the  point  of  view  of  Shaw's  anti-ideaHsm,  and  contains 
many  entertaining  flashes  of  hght  on  and  about  the 
struggle  then  proceeding  to  secure  a  foothold  for  the  Ibsen 
plays  on  the  English  stage;  but  it  is  Shaw's  philosophy 
rather  than  Ibsen's  that  is  set  forth,  and  the  essay  is  far 
from  being  a  sufiicient  or  safe  guide  to  the  ideas  and  pur- 
poses of  the  Scandinavian  poet.  In  the  second  volume 
the  Nibelung  cycle  is  interpreted  from  the  point  of  view 
of  Wagner's  revolutionary  opinions.  But  Shaw,  in  spite 
of  his  versatility  and  keen  intelligence,  is  no  more  suc- 
cessful than  a  mere  professor  in  applying  an  allegorical 
key  to  a  work  of  art.     At  the  time,  however,  the  book  no 


126  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

doubt  contributed  to  a  better  understanding  of  Wagner's 
genius. 

While  Shaw  was  earning  his  livelihood  as  a  journalist 
and  doing  good  service  by  winning  attention  for  work  of 
real  merit,  as  well  as  by  exposing  old  shams  and  new 
bores, — a  task  for  which  he  had  prepared  himself  by 
years  of  study — his  real  intellectual  interest  lay  in  the 
social  questions  which  later  became  the  predominant 
factor  in  his  work.  It  would  be  easy  to  convict  him  of 
inconsistency  under  this  head  by  disregarding  dates,  but 
the  better  plan  is  to  attempt  to  make  clear  the  successive 
stages  of  opinion  through  which  he  passed.  Of  the  earlier 
phases  of  his  socialistic  enthusiasm,  which  may  be  dated 
about  the  late  seventies  and  earlier  eighties,  he  gives  us  a 
striking  picture  in  his  address  to  the  British  Association 
at  Bath  (1888):— 

"Numbers  of  young  men,  pupils  of  Mill,  Spencer,  Comte,  and 
Darwin,  roused  by  Mr.  Henry  George's  'Progress  and  Poverty,'  left 
aside  evolution  and  free  thought;  took  to  insurrectionary  economics; 
studied  Karl  Marx;  and  were  so  convinced  that  Socialism  had  only 
to  be  put  clearly  before  the  working-classes  to  concentrate  the  power 
of  their  inmiense  mmabers  in  one  irresistible  organization,  that  the 
Revolution  was  fixed  for  1889 — the  anniversary  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution— at  latest.  I  remember  being  asked  satirically  and  publicly 
at  that  time  how  long  I  thought  it  would  take  to  get  Socialism  into 
working  order  if  I  had  my  way.  I  replied,  with  a  spirited  modesty, 
that  a  fortnight  would  be  ample  for  the  purpose.  When  I  add  that 
I  was  frequently  complimented  on  being  one  of  the  more  reasonable 
Socialists,  you  will  be  able  to  appreciate  the  fervour  of  our  convic- 
tion, and  the  extravagant  levity  of  our  ideas." 

When  the  Fabian  Society  was  founded  in  1884  with 
the  motto:  "For  the  right  moment  you  must  wait,  as 
Fabius  did  most  patiently  when  warring  against  Hanni- 
bal, though  many  censured  his  delays.     But  when  the 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         127 

time  comes  you  must  strike  hard,  as  Fabius  did,  or  your 
waiting  will  be  in  vain,  and  pointless,"  Shaw  joined  the 
ranks  of  these  middle  class  intellectuals,  whom  he  natu- 
rally found  more  congenial  than  the  Social  Democrats  led 
by  Hyndman.  He  at  once  took  an  active  part  in  the 
Society's  propaganda  and  contributed  two  of  its  first 
tracts,  one  of  them  a  brief  manifesto  setting  forth  its 
principles,  from  which  the  following  may  be  quoted  as 
indicative  of  his  position  in  1884: 

"That  it  is  the  duty  of  each  member  of  the  State  to  provide  for 
his  or  her  wants  by  his  or  her  own  Labour. 

"That  a  life-interest  in  the  Land  and  Capital  of  the  nation  is  the 
birth-right  of  every  individual  born  within  its  confines;  and  that 
access  to  this  birth-right  should  not  depend  upon  the  will  of  any 
private  person  other  than  the  person  seeking  it. 

"That  the  State  should  compete  with  private  individuals — espe- 
cially with  parents — in  providing  happy  homes  for  children,  so  that 
every  child  may  have  a  refuge  from  the  tyranny  or  neglect  of  its 
natural  custodians. 

"That  the  State  should  secure  a  liberal  education  and  an  equal 
share  in  the  National  Industry  to  each  of  its  units. 

"That  the  established  Government  has  no  more  right  to  call  itself 
the  State  than  the  smoke  of  London  has  to  call  itself  the  weather. 

"That  we  had  rather  face  a  Civil  War  than  such  another  century 
of  suffering  as  the  present  one  has  been." 

The  last  two  propositions  reflect  a  phase  of  Anarchism 
out  of  which  Shaw  passed  very  speedily.  A  deeper  study 
of  economics  led  him  to  reject  the  Marxian  theory  of 
"surplus  value,"  which  had  at  first  attracted  him,  and  in 
1887  he  exposed  its  weaknesses  in  a  series  of  papers  in  the 
'National  Reformer' ;  he  had  never  been  in  favour  of  the 
"class  war,"  another  cardinal  principle  of  Marxian 
Socialism,  and  he  passed  out  definitely  into  the  ranks  of 
those  who  believed  in  the  gradual  municipalization  of 


128  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

industry  and  the  transference  of  rent  and  interest  to  the 
State,  not  in  one  lump  sum,  but  by  instalments.  This  is 
the  position  taken  by  him  in  the  British  Association 
paper  of  1888,  published,  together  with  another  on  the 
econonufc  basis  of  Socialism,  in  the  'Fabian  Essays'  of 
1889. /By  this  time  he  was  ready  to  ridicule  the  revolu- 
tionary Socialist  as  "My  friend  Fitzthunder,"  and  to 
speak  of  the  extremists  as  "romantic  amateurs  who  repre- 
sent nobody  but  their  silly  selves."  A  paper  in  1896  on 
"The  Illusions  of  Socialism"  alienated  and  disconcerted 
many  of  his  old  comrades  still  further  by  its  appalling 
frankness.  In  a  lighter  effort,  'Socialism  for  Million- 
aires' (1896)  he  advises  them  to  give  the  public  "some- 
thing they  ought  to  want  and  don't" — and  some  Ameri- 
can millionaires  have  followed  his  counsel.  The  Fabian 
Society  had  become  more  moderate  in  its  expectations 
and  demands  and  among  these  moderates  Shaw  attached 
himself  to  the  more  conservative  wing,  assisting  Sidney 
Webb  to  resist  the  unsuccessful  campaign  of  H.  G.  Wells 
in  favour  of  a  more  vigorous  policy,  including  the  endow- 
ment of  motherhood.  Shaw  had  enlarged  his  acquaint- 
ance with  practical  problems  of  administration  by  six 
years'  service  on  the  St.  Pancras  Borough  Council,  the 
main  literary  outcome  being  one  of  his  most  solidly  rea- 
soned Socialistic  pamphlets,  'The  Common  Sense  of 
Municipal  Trading'  (1904).  About  this  time  his  interest 
in  Sociahsm  was  waning  under  the  competition  of  a  new 
enthusiasm  for  eugenics,  but  this  belongs  to  the  later 
period  of  his  success  as  a  dramatist  and  will  be  most  con- 
veniently discussed  in  that  connection.  In  1911  he  de- 
clared himself  still  theoretically  in  favour  of  "a  system 
of  society  where  all  the  income  of  the  country  is  to  be 


GEOEGE  BERNARD  SHAW         129 

divided  up  in  exactly  equal  proportions,"  but  as  he  was 
not  very  clear  whether  the  share  of  every  man,  woman 
and  child  would  be  £500  a  year  or  £50  a  year,  this  avowal 
of  a  pious  belief  attracted  little  attention.  The  exposi- 
tion of  this  view  in  a  later  address,  *  The  Case  for  Equality ' 
(1914)  was  overshadowed  by  the  outbreak  of  the  Great 
War. 

As  early  as  1885,  the  eminent  dramatic  critic  and  trans- 
lator of  Ibsen,  William  Archer,  who  secured  for  Shaw  his 
first  footing  in  journalism,  had  attempted  to  collaborate 
with  him  in  a  play.  Its  subject  was  to  be  the  power  of 
money  in  modern  social  and  industrial  organization — the 
theme  of  the  'Rheingold,'  as  afterwards  developed  by 
Shaw  in  '  The  Perfect  Wagnerite ' — and  its  manner  was  to 
be  that  of  the  well-made  play,  a  French  comedy,  ^La 
Ceinture  Dorie,'  being  actually  chosen  for  a  suggestion  of 
the  plot.  Archer  made  the  scenario,  and  Shaw  wrote  the 
dialogue  for  the  first  act.  At  this  point  the  two  collab- 
orators found  themselves  hopelessly  at  variance,  but 
Shaw  insisted  on  finishing  the  second  act  and  reading  it 
to  Archer,  who  promptly  went  to  sleep.  This  silent 
criticism  discouraged  Shaw  more  than  his  collaborator's 
comments,  and  he  put  the  manuscript  aside.  Then  came, 
in  the  wake  of  the  new  theatre  movement  abroad  and  the 
controversy  about  the  production  of  the  Ibsen  plays  on 
the  English  stage,  the  foundation  of  the  Independent 
Theatre  in  London  by  J.  T.  Grein.  The  theatre  was 
there,  but  where  were  the  new  English  plays?  None 
were  to  be  found,  and  Shaw  bethought  himself  of  his  re- 
jected manuscript.  He  added  a  third  act,  gave  it  the 
mock-scriptural  title  of  'Widowers'  Houses,'  and  it  was 
produced.     "  It  made  a  sensation  out  of  all  proportion  to 

10 


130  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

its  merits  and  even  its  demerits;  and  I  at  once  became 
infamous  as  a  dramatist."  The  Socialists  applauded  on 
principle;  the  public  hooted;  the  critics  followed  suit; 
and  the  play  was  immediately  withdrawn.  Shaw  him- 
self accurately  describes  it  as  "a  grotesquely  realistic  ex- 
posure of  slum  landlordism,  municipal  jobbery,  and  the 
pecuniary  and  matrimonial  ties  between  it  and  the  pleas- 
ant people  of  'independent'  incomes  who  imagine  that 
such  sordid  matters  do  not  touch  their  own  lives."  The 
characters  are  grotesquely  impossible,  the  plot  is  con- 
ventional romance  reversed  so  as  to  show  all  manner  of 
ugliness,  the  dialogue  is  adorned  with  "silly  pleasantries" 
(the  author's  own  phrase).  Shaw  admits  that  in  these 
"farcical  trivialities"  he  had  not  taken  the  theatre  seri- 
ously, and  he  determined  to  try  again. 

Ibsenism,  now  become  a  craze,  was  misunderstood  both 
by  its  reactionary  opponents  and  its  "emancipated" 
devotees,  and  Shaw  undertook  in  his  next  play  to  show 
both  sides  their  misconceptions.  'The  Philanderer,'  of 
which  the  central  scenes  pass  in  a  supposed  Ibsen  club  in 
London,  exhibits  in  its  characters  various  degrees  of  in- 
fatuated hero-worship  and  blind  condemnation,  the 
heroine,  Grace  Tranfield,  representing  the  intelligent 
appreciation  of  Ibsen's  ideas  as  interpreted  by  Shaw  him- 
self. The  play  also  serves  to  illustrate  the  fundamental 
difference  in  method  between  Shaw  and  the  great  Scan- 
dinavian whom  he  has  been  accused  of  copying.  Ibsen 
is  primarily  the  poet-dramatist,  whose  aim  is  "to  depict 
human  beings,  human  emotions,  and  human  destinies, 
upon  a  groundwork  of  certain  of  the  social  conditions  and 
principles  of  the  present  day."  Shaw  is  first  of  all  a 
propagandist,  who  uses  the  stage  as  a  pulpit  to  set  forth 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         131 

his  opinions.  In  'The  Philanderer/  in  addition  to  the 
exposition  of  popular  misconceptions  about  Ibsen,  Shaw 
indulges  his  prejudices  against  vivisection  and  the  medi- 
cal profession.  The  dialogue  shows  a  considerable  ad- 
vance on  'Widowers'  Houses,'  but  the  characters,  though 
more  subtly  conceived,  are  still  mechanical.  Grein  de- 
clined to  produce  it  on  the  excuse  that  it  was  beyond  the 
capacity  of  his  company,  and  it  remained  unacted  until 
its  real  significance  was  almost  unintelligible  to  either  a 
New  York  or  a  London  audience,  the  Ibsen  craze  having 
passed. 

Shaw  had  too  much  determination  and  intellectual 
vigour  to  be  discouraged.  He  returned  to  his  earlier 
model  in  'Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,'  which  purports  to 
deal  with  the  question  of  prostitution,  but  really  dis- 
cusses much  wider  questions  of  social  and  commercial 
organization.  Mrs.  Warren,  in  her  account  of  herself 
first  as  a  poor  working  girl  and  then  as  a  successful  man- 
ager of  a  white  slave  syndicate,  sets  forth  the  apologue  of 
modern  industrialism,  as  Shaw  viewed  it.  The  other 
characters  are  much  less  powerfully  realized,  and  the  rifle 
episode  introduces  an  unnecessary  element  of  melodrama; 
the  doubtful  paternity  of  Mrs.  Warren's  daughter  also 
introduces  unnecessary  elements  of  "unpleasantness," 
but  as  a  piece  of  dramatic  construction  and  character 
drawing  the  play  is  by  far  the  best  thing  Shaw  had  yet 
done.  The  British  censor,  however,  interfered  and  pro- 
hibited its  performance,  but  of  the  prohibition  and  the 
newspaper  controversy  that  resulted  when  the  play  was 
produced  in  New  York  Shaw  did  not  fail  to  make  literary 
capital. 

Within  a  year  Shaw  returned  to  the  attack  on  the  stage, 


132  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

and  this  time  he  succeeded.  'Arms  and  the  Man '  traves- 
ties only  conventional  romanticism  and  militarism,  and 
as  the  scene  was  laid  in  Bulgaria,  about  which  the  British 
public  knew  little  and  cared  less,  critics  and  audiences 
alike  were  willing  to  be  amused.  It  ran  for  three  months 
in  London,  and  Richard  Mansfield  later  made  it  popular  in 
the  United  States.  It  reverses  the  traditional  theory  of 
playmaking,  for  the  plot  rises  to  its  height  in  the  first  act 
and  wanders  off  into  mere  dialogue;  but  the  dialogue  is 
easy  and  sparkling,  and  found  ready  acceptance  as  it 
clashed  with  no  cherished  convictions  and  attacked  no 
revered  institutions.  The  libretto  of  'The  Chocolate 
Soldier'  was  borrowed  from  it  and  has  helped  to  make 
'Arms  and  the  Man'  one  of  Shaw's  best  known  plays. 

Christian  Socialism  was  again  in  the  air,  and  Shaw, 
refusing  to  continue  on  the  Une  of  popular  success,  chose 
this  as  the  background  for  his  next  play,  'Candida.' 
London  managers  praised  its  originaUty  and  verve,  but 
refused  to  produce  it,  and  it  waited  nearly  ten  years  be- 
fore it  was  acted  by  Arnold  Daly  in  New  York  and  es- 
tablished Shaw's  reputation  as  a  popular  dramatist. 
New  York  women  took  their  husbands  to  'Candida'  as  to 
a  lecture  on  the  secret  of  matrimonial  fehcity,  and  the 
"shawl"  speech — "put  your  trust  in  my  love  for  you, 
James,  for  if  that  went  I  should  care  very  little  for  your 
sermons" — became  a  commonplace  of  American  con- 
versation. Shaw  was  outraged  at  this  popular  appre- 
ciation, protested  that  that  "minx"  Candida  had  taken 
in  the  New  York  public,  and  cast  further  obscurity  on 
the  situation  by  a  supplementary  play,  '  How  He  Lied  to 
Her  Husband.'  The  main  significance  of  'Candida,' 
apart  from  its  popular  interpretation,  is  not  very  clear. 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         133 

but  there  are  amusing  and  enlightening  reflections  on 
love,  marriage,  socialism,  Christianity,  and  art,  and  the 
play  has  held  the  stage  by  the  excellence  of  its  character 
drawing — "minx"  or  heroine,  Candida  is  admirably  con- 
ceived— an  emotional  power  in  the  main  situation  unusual 
in  Shaw's  plays,  and  the  unfaiHng  vivacity  of  its  dialogue. 
While  it  was  still  unproduced  and  unpublished,  and 
Shaw  was  at  work  on  'The  Man  of  Destiny,' — a  con- 
versation between  Napoleon  Bonaparte  as  Shaw  con- 
ceived him  and  a  lady  in  the  hkeness  of  Ellen  Terry, 
which  was  acted  a  few  years  later  and  failed — he  was 
approached  by  Cyril  Maude,  manager  of  the  Haymarket 
Theatre,  with  an  inquiry  about  this  new  play.  Shaw 
answered  that  it  would  not  suit  the  Haymarket — ^it  was 
intended  for  Richard  Mansfield,  who  did  not  like  it — but 
that  he  would  write  one  that  would — "which"  Maude 
protests  "I  never  asked  him  to  do."  Maude's  account 
of  the  later  adventures  of  this  specially  written  play  is 
amusing  enough  to  be  quoted : — 

"In  the  winter  of  1897  this  play,  which  was  called  'You  Never 
Can  Tell,'  came  to  hand.  Some  of  our  friends  thought  well  of  the 
author,  and  Harrison  (who,  as  my  readers  have  doubtless  already 
gathered,  is  a  perfect  ignoramus  in  all  matters  connected  with  plays 
and  acting)  liked  the  play.  In  short,  I  allowed  myself  to  be  over- 
persuaded,  and  we  actually  put  the  play  into  rehearsal. 

"  From  the  first  the  author  showed  the  perversity  of  his  disposition 
and  his  utter  want  of  practical  knowledge  of  the  stage.  He  proposed 
impossible  casts.  He  forced  us  into  incomprehensible  agreements 
by  torturing  us  with  endless  talk  until  we  were  ready  to  sign  anything 
rather  than  argue  for  another  hour.  Had  I  been  properly  supported 
by  my  colleagues  I  should  not  have  tolerated  his  proceedings  for  a 
moment.  I  do  not  wish  to  complain  of  anybody,  but  as  a  matter  of 
fact  I  was  not  so  supported.  I  expected  nothing  better  from  Harri- 
son, because  with  all  his  excellent  qualities  he  is  too  vain — I  say  it 


134  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

though  he  is  my  best  friend — to  be  trusted  in  so  delicate  an  under- 
taking as  the  management  of  a  theatre.  The  truth  is,  Shaw  flattered 
him,  and  thus  detached  him  from  me  by  playing  on  his  one  fatal 
weakness. 

"The  world  knows,  I  think,  that  whatever  my  faults  may  be,  I  am 
an  affectionate  and  devoted  husband.  But  I  have  never  pretended 
that  my  wife  is  perfect.  No  woman  is,  and  but  few  men.  Still,  I  do 
think  she  might  have  supported  me  better  than  she  did  through  our 
greatest  trial.  This  man  from  the  first  exercised  a  malign  influence 
over  her.  With  my  full  consent  and  approval  she  selected  for  her- 
self a  certain  part  in  his  play.  He  had  privately  resolved — out  of 
mere  love  of  contradiction — that  she  should  play  another.  When 
he  read  the  play  he  contrived  to  balance  the  parts  in  such  a  way  that 
my  unfortunate  and  misguided  wife  actually  there  and  then  gave  up 
her  part  and  accepted  the  one  he  had  determined  to  throw  upon  her. 
I  then  recognized  for  the  first  time  that  I  had  to  deal  with  a  veritable 
Svengali. 

"Our  mistake  in  admitting  an  author  of  this  type  to  our  theatre 
soon  became  apparent.  At  the  reading,  that  excellent  actor.  Jack 
Barnes,  whose  very  name  calls  up  the  idea  of  sound  judgment,  with- 
drew, overpowered  by  fatigue  and  disgust,  at  the  end  of  the  first  act, 
and  presently  threw  up  the  part  with  which  we  proposed  to  insult 
him — and  I  now  publicly  apologize  to  him  for  that  outrage.  Miss 
Coleman  soon  followed  his  example,  with  a  very  natural  protest 
against  a  part  in  which,  as  she  rightly  said,  there  were  '  no  laughs  and 
no  exits.'  Any  author  with  the  slightest  decency  of  feeling  would 
have  withdrawn  in  the  face  of  rebuffs  so  pointed  as  these.  But  Mr. 
Shaw — encouraged,  I  must  say,  by  Harrison — ^persisted  in  what  had 
now  become  an  intolerable  intrusion. 

"  I  can  hardly  describe  the  rehearsals  that  followed.  It  may  well 
be  that  my  recollection  of  them  is  confused;  for  my  nerves  soon  gave 
way;  sleep  became  a  stranger  to  me;  and  there  were  moments  at 
which  I  was  hardly  in  possession  of  my  faculties.  I  had  to  stage- 
manage  as  well  as  act — to  stage-manage  with  that  demon  sitting 
beside  me  casting  an  evil  spell  on  all  our  efforts! 

"On  one  occasion  Mr.  Shaw  insulted  the  entire  profession  by  want- 
ing a  large  table  on  the  stage,  on  the  ground  that  the  company  would 
fall  over  it  unless  they  behaved  as  if  they  were  coming  into  a  real 


GEORGE  BERNABD  SHAW         135 

room  instead  of,  as  he  coarsely  observed,  rushing  to  the  float  to  pick 
up  the  band  at  the  beginning  of  a  comic  song.  This  was  a  personal 
attack  on  me,  as  my  vivacity  of  character  and  diable  au  corps  make 
me  specially  impatient  of  obstacles. 

"Mr.  Shaw  was  one  of  those  persons  who  use  a  certain  superficial 
reasonableness  and  dexterity  of  manner  to  cover  an  invincible  ob- 
stinacy in  their  own  opinion.  We  had  engaged  for  the  leading  part 
(I  myself  having  accepted  an  insignificant  part  as  a  mere  waiter)  no 
less  an  artist  than  Mr.  Allan  Aynesworth,  whose  reputation  and  sub- 
sequent achievements  make  it  unnecessary  for  me  to  justify  our 
choice.  Mr.  Shaw  had  from  the  first  contended  that  one  of  the 
scenes  lay  outside  Mr.  Aynesworth's  peculiar  province.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  now  that  Mr.  Shaw  deliberately  used  his  hypnotic  power 
at  rehearsal  to  compel  Mr.  Aynesworth  to  fulfil  his  prediction.  In 
every  other  scene  Mr.  Aynesworth  surpassed  himself.  In  this  he 
became  conscious  and  confused;  his  high  spirits  were  suddenly  ex- 
tinguished; even  his  good-humour  left  him.  He  was  like  a  man 
under  a  spell — as  no  doubt  he  actually  was — and  his  embarrassment 
communicated  itself  most  painfully  to  my  dear  wife,  who  had  to  sit 
on  the  stage  whilst  Svengali  deliberately  tortured  his  victim. 

"At  the  same  time  I  must  say  that  Mrs.  Maude's  conduct  was  not 
all  I  could  have  desired.  I  greatly  dreaded  an  open  rupture  between 
her  and  the  author;  and  the  fiend  somehow  divined  this,  and  used  it 
as  a  means  of  annoying  me.  Sometimes,  when  he  had  cynically 
watched  one  of  her  scenes  without  any  symptom  of  pleasure,  I  would 
venture  to  ask  him  his  opinion  of  it.  On  such  occasions  he  invariably 
rose  with  every  appearance  of  angry  disapproval,  informed  me  that 
he  would  give  his  opinion  to  Miss  Emery  herself,  and  stalked  up  the 
stage  to  her  in  a  threatening  manner,  leaving  me  in  a  state  of  appre- 
hension that  my  overstrained  nerves  were  ill  able  to  bear.  Not  until 
afterwards  did  I  learn  that  on  these  occasions  he  flattered  my  wife 
disgracefully,  and  actually  made  her  a  party  to  his  systematic  at- 
tempt to  drive  me  out  of  my  senses.  I  have  never  reproached  her 
with  it,  and  I  never  shall.  I  mention  it  here  only  because  it  is  the 
truth;  and  truth  has  always  been  with  me  the  first  consideration. 

"At  last  Aynesworth  broke  down  under  the  torture.  Mr.  Shaw, 
with  that  perfidious  air  of  making  the  best  of  everything  which  never 
deserted  him,  hypnotized  him  into  complaining  of  the  number  of 


136  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

speeches  he  had  to  deliver,  whereupon  Mr.  Shaw  cut  out  no  less  than 
seventeen  of  them.  This  naturally  disabled  the  artist  totally.  On 
the  question  of  cutting,  Mr.  Shaw's  attitude  was  nothing  less  than 
Satanic,  When  I  suggested  cutting  he  handed  me  the  play,  begged 
me  to  cut  it  freely,  and  then  hypnotized  me  so  that  I  could  not  collect 
my  thoughts  sufficiently  to  cut  a  single  line.  On  the  other  hand,  if  I 
showed  the  least  pleasure  in  a  scene  at  rehearsal  he  at  once  cut  it  out 
on  the  ground  that  the  play  was  too  long.  What  I  suffered  from  that 
man  at  that  time  will  never  be  fully  known.  The  heart  alone  know- 
eth  its  own  bitterness. 

"The  end  came  suddenly  and  unexpectedly.  We  had  made  a  spe- 
cial effort  to  fulfil  our  unfortunate  contract,  of  which  even  Harrison 
was  now  beginning  to  have  his  doubts.  We  had  brought  back  Miss 
Kate  Bishop  from  Avistralia  to  replace  Miss  Coleman.  Mr.  Valen- 
tine had  taken  the  part  repudiated  by  Mr.  Barnes.  The  scenery  had 
been  modelled,  and  a  real  dentist's  chair  obtained  for  the  first  act. 
Harrison,  whose  folly  was  responsible  for  the  whole  wretched  busi- 
ness, came  down  to  the  rehearsal.  We  were  honestly  anxious  to 
retrieve  the  situation  by  a  great  effort,  and  save  our  dear  little  theatre 
from  the  disgrace  of  a  failure. 

"Suddenly  the  author  entered,  in  a  new  suit  of  clothes!!" 

Maude's  judgment  in  rejecting  *  You  Never  Can  Tell' 
was  at  fault,  for  it  has  since  proved  one  of  Shaw's  most 
popular  productions,  both  in  England  and  America, 
combining  a  delightfully  comic  waiter  and  a  grotesque 
barrister  (his  son),  impossible  twins  and  a  dental  chair  as 
a  novelty  in  stage  device  with  a  modicum  of  philosophy 
about  the  relations  of  parents  and  children.  But  as  the 
frontal  attack  on  the  stage  had  apparently  failed,  Shaw 
tried  the  flank  by  publishing  his  one  success  and  half 
dozen  failures  under  the  title  of  'Plays  Pleasant  and 
Unpleasant,'  with  elaborate  stage  directions  and  still 
more  elaborate  prefaces,  intended  for  the  edification 
of  readers  and  as  "first  aid  to  critics."  The  success 
of   this   venture   established    the    modern    practice   of 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         137 

publishing  plays  and  gave  Shaw  access  to  the  English- 
reading  public  all  over  the  world.  He  repeated  the  ex- 
periment, adding  three  prefaces  this  time,  in  '  Three  Plays 
for  Puritans'  (1901)— 'The  Devil's  Disciple,'  'Caesar  and 
Cleopatra,'  and  'Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion,' the 
first  and  last  mere  burlesques — conventional  melodrama 
with  the  spice  of  Shavian  wit, — and  the  middle  play 
written  in  emulation  of  Shakespeare,  who  had  presented 
the  Romans  as  contemporary  Elizabethans.  Shaw  pre- 
sents Caesar  as  a  modern  statesman,  Cleopatra  as  a 
naughty  English  school  girl,  and  Britannus  as  a  conven- 
tional Victorian.  As  acted  later  by  Sir  Johnston  Forbes- 
Robertson's  company,  this  travesty  won  much  applause 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  but  all  three  plays,  when 
originally  produced  in  1899  and  1902,  had  to  be  classed  as 
failures.  At  the  opening  of  this  century,  when  Shaw  was 
forty-five,  he  was  still  an  unsuccessful  dramatist  so  far  as 
stage  production  was  concerned. 

The  turn  of  the  tide  came  in  1903-4  with  the  successful 
production  of  '  Candida,' '  The  Man  of  Destiny,'  and  '  You 
Never  Can  Tell '  in  the  New  York  season  of  Arnold  Daly, 
and  the  revival  of  'Arms  and  the  Man '  by  Richard  Mans- 
field. About  the  same  time  German  translations  of  '  The 
Devil's  Disciple,'  'The, Man  of  Destiny'  and  'Candida,' 
made  by  an  Austrian  playwright  at  the  instance  of 
William  Archer,  were  successfully  acted  at  Vienna,  Frank- 
fort, Dresden,  and  Berlin.  There  was  a  natural  reaction 
in  London,  and  Barker  at  the  Court  Theatre  produced 
'  Candida,'  '  The  Man  of  Destiny,' '  You  Never  Can  Tell,' 
and  then  the  older  plays  (except  the  prohibited  'Mrs. 
Warren's  Profession')  with  unvarying  success.  The 
plays  were  translated  into  Swedish,  Danish,  Magyar, 


I 


138  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Polish,  Russian,  and  Dutch,  and  Shaw's  position  as  an 
international  playwright  became  as  incontestable  as  his 
supremacy  on  the  English  stage. 

'Man  and  Superman'  had  been  published  in  1903  with 
'Epistle  dedicatory,  the  Revolutionist's  Handbook,  and 
Maxims  for  Revolutionists.'  With  the  third  act  ('Don 
Juan  in  Hell')  omitted,  Forbes-Robertson  made  it  the 
success  of  the  season  1904-5,  both  in  England  and  the 
United  States.  The  telling  situation  of  the  jSrst  act, 
though  against  all  theatrical  tradition  (in  that  the  secret 
of  Violet's  marriage  is  held  back  from  the  audience)  and 
contrary  to  popular  morality,  delighted  the  public,  and 
the  suggestion  that  woman  is  the  pursuer  rather  than  the 
pursued  had  enough  truth  in  it  to  win  favour.  Shaw's 
more  serious  purpose  was  to  set  forth  his  new  doctrine 
of  the  Life  Force,  which  impels  Ann  to  seek  in  John 
Tanner  a  father  for  the  Superman.  "For  art's  sake" 
alone,  he  tells  us  in  the  'Epistle  dedicatory'  he  "would 
not  face  the  toil  of  writing  a  single  sentence."  By  com- 
paring the  Epistle  with  'The  Revolutionist's  Handbook' 
we  learn  that  what  Shaw  wished  to  convey  was  that  edu- 
cation, progress,  democracy,  socialism  are  all  illusions, 
and  that  "the  only  fundamental  and  possible  socialism 
is  the  socialization  of  the  selective  breeding  of  Man:  in 
other  terms,  of  human  evolution,"  The  "method"  is 
apparently  to  be  "a  joint  stock  human  stud  farm"  under 
a  State  Department  of  Evolution.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
very  few  of  the  thousands  who  enjoyed  the  play  in  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States  saw  anything  of  this  in  the 
submission  of  John  Tanner  and  Ann  Whitefield  to  "the 
Life  Force"  when  they  "renounce  happiness,  renounce 
freedom,  renounce  tranquillity,  above  all,  renounce  the 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         139 

romantic  possibilities  of  an  unknown  future,  for  the  cares 
of  a  household  and  a  family."  They  say  to  Shaw,  as  Ann 
said  to  Tanner,  "Go  on  talking,"  and  the  final  stage 
direction,  "universal  laughter,"  includes  the  audience  as 
well  as  the  actors. 

After  a  political  dissertation  on  the  Irish  question, 
'John  Bull's  Other  Island,'  much  more  favourably  re- 
garded in  London  than  in  Dublin,  for  which  it  was 
written, — Shaw  returned  to  sociology  in  '  Major  Barbara.' 
The  introduction  of  the  Salvation  Army  is  merely  inci- 
dental, and  Shaw  apparently  chose  the  manufacture  of 
munitions  as  Undershaft's  business  because  it  was  the 
modern  industry  he  disliked  most;  but  behind  Under- 
shaft  stands  the  Life  Force,  regarded  no  longer  as  an  im- 
pulse to  propagation  but  as  the  Will  of  God — "a.  will  of 
which  I  am  a  part."  The  real  burden  of  the  play  (and  of 
the  preface)  is,  however,  the  doctrine  of  the  evil  of  pov- 
erty, taken  over  (with  due  acknowledgment)  from  Samuel 
Butler.     In  the  preface  we  read : 

"Now  what  does  this  Let  Him  Be  Poor  mean?  It  means  let  him 
be  weak.  Let  him  be  ignorant.  Let  him  become  a  nucleus  of  dis- 
ease. Let  him  be  a  standing  exhibition  and  example  of  ugliness  and 
dirt.  Let  him  have  rickety  children.  Let  him  be  cheap  and  let  him 
drag  his  fellows  down  to  his  price  by  selling  himself  to  do  their  work. 
Let  his  habitations  turn  our  cities  into  poisonous  congeries  o  slums. 
Let  his  daughters  infect  our  young  men  with  the  diseases  of  the 
streets  and  his  sons  revenge  him  by  turning  the  nation's  manhood 
into  scrofula,  cowardice,  cruelty,  h5:pocrisy,  political  imbeciUty,  and 
all  the  other  fruits  of  oppression  and  malnutrition." 

So  in  the  play  Undershaft  enumerates  the  seven  deadly 
sins  as  "food,  clothing,  firing,  rent,  taxes,  respectability 
and  children,"  and  describes  poverty  as  "the  worst  of 
crimes": 


140  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"All  the  other  crimes  are  virtues  beside  it :  all  the  other  dishonours 
are  chivalry  itself  by  comparison.  Poverty  blights  whole  cities; 
spreads  horrible  pestilences;  strikes  dead  the  very  souls  of  all  who 
come  within  sight,  sound  or  smell  of  it.  What  you  call  crime  is  noth- 
ing :  a  murder  here  and  a  theft  there,  a  blow  now  and  a  curse  then : 
what  do  they  matter?  they  are  only  the  accidents  and  illnesses  of  life : 
there  are  not  fifty  genuine  professional  criminals  in  London.  But 
there  are  millions  of  poor  people,  abject  people,  dirty  people,  iU  fed, 
ill  clothed  people.  They  poison  us  morally  and  physically:  they  kill 
the  happiness  of  society :  they  force  us  to  do  away  with  our  own  liber- 
ties and  to  organize  imnatural  cruelties  for  fear  they  should  rise 
against  us  and  drag  us  down  into  their  abyss.  Only  fools  fear  crime: 
we  all  fear  poverty. " 

The  public  found  Shaw's  doctrines  as  expounded  by 
Undershaft  much  less  interesting  than  'The  Revolu- 
tionist's Handbook,'  and  the  Salvation  Army  lass  who 
was  the  granddaughter  of  an  earl  was  no  more  convincing 
than  the  Greek  professor  who  turned  from  beating  the 
big  drum  to  running  a  huge  concern  for  the  manufacture 
of  munitions.  There  was  a  further  falhng-off  in  'The 
Doctor's  Dilemma,'  which  repeats  on  a  large  scale  and 
in  a  preface  of  nearly  a  hundred  pages  the  misrepresenta- 
tion of  the  medical  profession  Shaw  had  already  been 
guilty  of  in  the  earlier  sketch  of  Dr.  Paramore  ('The 
Philanderer').  The  professional  dilemma  is  non-exist- 
ent, there  bemg  no  question  as  to  the  conduct  of  a  doctor 
who  kills  a  patient  because  he  wants  to  marry  the  pa- 
tient's wife;  but  the  problem  really  posed  is  "how  much 
selfishness  we  ought  to  stand  from  a  gifted  person  for  the 
sake  of  his  gifts."  In  the  preface  to  '  The  Sanity  of  Art,' 
written  about  this  time,  Shaw  says  that  he  does  not  be- 
heve  in  allowing  hcense  to  genius,  but  in  the  play  the 
rascally  artist  makes  out  a  very  good  case  for  himself,  and 
dies  in  "indescribable  peace"  protesting  his  faith  "in 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         141 

Michael  Angelo,  Velasquez,  and  Rembrandt;  in  the 
might  of  design,  the  mystery  of  colour,  the  redemption  of 
all  things  by  Beauty  everlasting,  and  the  message  of  art 
that  has  made  these  hands  blessed." 

'The  Doctor's  Dilemma'  was  acted  as  soon  as  it  was 
written,  and  so  were  the  two  plays  that  followed  it. 
Shaw  was  in  a  position  to  say  what  he  liked,  for  revo- 
lutionary opinion  was  growing,  and  many  people  who 
enjoyed  his  fun  regarded  his  paradoxes  merely  as  part 
of  the  performance.  In  'Getting  Married'  he  not  only 
said  what  he  hked,  but  said  it  how  he  liked.  There  is 
no  plot — merely  the  setting  of  a  continuous  conversation 
on  marriage,  fortified  by  the  customary  preface,  in  which 
polygyny,  polyandry,  promiscuity,  and  every  other  sexual 
arrangement  is  discussed,  and  the  following  are  offered  as 
practical  proposals: 

"  Make  divorce  as  easy,  as  cheap,  and  as  private  as  marriage. 

"Grant  divorce  at  the  request  of  either  party,  whether  the  other 
consents  or  not;  and  admit  no  other  ground  than  the  request,  which 
should  be  made  without  stating  any  reasons. 

"  Place  the  work  of  a  wife  and  mother  on  the  same  footing  as  other 
work:  that  is,  on  the  footing  of  labour  worthy  of  its  hire;  and  provide 
for  unemployment  in  it  exactly  as  for  unemployment  in  shipbuild- 
ing or  any  other  recognized  bread-winning  trade." 

The  play  presents  the  inequahties  and  subterfuges  of 
the  existing  marriage  system  is  a  sufficiently  extravagant 
fashion,  and  is  remarkable  for  a  passage  in  which  Mrs. 
George  is  inspired  to  picture  the  raptures  of  passion  with 
an  ardour  Shaw  succeeded  in  conveying  only  in  this  in- 
stance— and  that  in  retrospect. 

In  '  The  Shewing-up  of  Blanco  Posnet '  Shaw  returned 
to  melodrama,  this  time  in  a  Wild  Western  setting,  with 
the  Life  Force  figuring  under  the  name  of  God.     This  the 


142  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Censor  objected  to  and  prohibited  the  performance  of  the 
play;  but  as  the  Lord  Chamberlain's  writ  did  not  run  in 
DubHn,  it  passed  successfully  into  the  repertory  of  the 
Irish  National  Theatre,  and  was  produced  by  the  Irish 
Players  on  their  American  tour  without  a  shadow  of 
offence.  Shaw  took  occasion  to  make  hay  of  the  British . 
censorship,  which  was  then  being  investigated  by  a  parlia- 
mentary committee,  in  a  characteristic  preface. 

The  Censor  also  fell  foul  of  Shaw's  next  play,  'Press 
Cuttings,'  which  ridiculed  the  suffragette  agitation,  then 
at  its  height,  and  represented  Premier  Balsquith  as  chain- 
ing himself  to  the  scraper  at  General  Mitchener's  door. 
As  the  Censor  had  objected  to  the  "sermon  in  crude 
Melodrama"  because  it  discussed  religion,  a  forbidden 
subject  for  the  EngUsh  theatre,  he  interposed  in  this  in- 
stance another  long-standing  tradition  which  prohibited 
the  introduction  of  contemporary  personages  on  the 
stage.  Shaw  protested  that  he  had  no  intention  of  cari- 
caturing Mr.  Asquith  and  Lord  Kitchener  and  changed 
the  names  to  Johnson  and  Bones;  the  play  is  an  amusing 
skit  on  contemporary  pohtical  difficulties,  but  has  no 
philosophic  or  dramatic  significance. 

The  same  might  be  said  of  'MisalUance,'  except  that  it 
gave  the  opportunity  for  a  preface  on  '  Parents  and  Chil- 
dren' (Samuel  Butler  again)  of  more  than  ordinary  length, 
and  of  'The  Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets,'  a  Shakespearian 
extravaganza,  both  of  which  failed  to  please;  but  with 
'Fanny's  First  Play'  Shaw  scored  the  most  remarkable 
success  of  his  career.  It  had  a  record  run  in  London,  and 
in  the  United  States  it  may  be  said  to  be  running  yet. 
Shaw  availed  himself  of  the  Elizabethan  device  of  "the 
play  within  the  play"  for  a  setting  in  which  he  made  fun 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         143 

of  the  critics,  not  sparing  kis  own  friends  William  Archer 
and  A.  B.  Walkley ;  and  the  expedient  of  attributing  the 
play  proper  to  an  aspiring  amateur  enabled  him  to  com- 
bine the  extravagant  heresies  he  had  already  inflicted  on 
the  public  with  a  conventional  plot.  The  son  of  a  re- 
spectable tradesman  is  sentenced  to  fourteen  days'  im- 
prisonment with  the  option  of  a  fine  for  assaulting  the 
police,  on  the  same  day  that  the  daughter  of  another 
respectable  tradesman,  to  whom  he  is  engaged,  receives  a 
similar  penalty  for  the  same  offence,  independently  com- 
mitted by  her  on  her  way  home  from  a  religious  meeting. 
In  the  end  the  boy  marries  "  DarHng  Dora, "  a  "  daughter 
of  joy,"  and  the  girl  a  disguised  footman  who  is  the 
brother  of  a  Duke.  In  the  two-page  preface,  which  was 
all  he  deemed  the  play  worth,  Shaw  described  it  as  a 
mere  "pot-boiler,"  and  so  it  was,  in  the  sense  that  it  con- 
tained no  propaganda  that  Shaw  had  not  made  before; 
but  the  public  liked  the  familiar  heresies  about  family  life 
all  the  better  in  a  setting  obviously  absurd,  and  accepted 
them  as  a  not  unwelcome  part  of  a  capital  evening's 
entertainment. 

By  this  time  Shaw  had  communicated  to  the  pubHc, 
indirectly  and  directly,  all  that  he  really  had  to  say.  He 
had  realized  the  need  for  saying  it  entertainingly,  and  in 
some  cases  the  sugar-coating  of  the  pill  had  been  so  sub- 
stantial as  to  overmaster  completely  the  bitter  instruc- 
tion it  was  intended  to  convey,  but  this  was  remedied  by 
the  prefaces,  if  people  could  be  induced  to  read  them. 
There  was  no  subject,  however,  on  which  his  versatile 
intellect  could  not  reflect  gleams  of  wit  and  wisdom,  and 
the  temptation  of  the  open  stage,  to  be  used  as  a  pulpit 
to  his  heart's  desire,  was  too  great  to  be  resisted.     '  Over- 


144  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

ruled/  which  was  first  entitled  '  Trespassers  will  be  Prose- 
cuted,' is  a  continuation  of  the  interminable  conversation 
of*  Getting  Married,'  and  'Great  Catherine'  introduces  a 
Victorian  EngUshman  to  the  Russian  court  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  but  both  these  are  mere  sketches.  The 
substantial  additions  to  Shaw's  dramatic  achievement 
up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  War  are  'Pygmalion,'  which 
had  its  original  production  at  Berlin  in  1912,  and  'An- 
drocles  and  the  Lion.'  Both  were  put  on  the  London  and 
New  York  stages  in  1913,  and  met  with  general  approval, 
though  they  did  not  attain  to  the  popular  success  of 
'Fanny's  First  Play.' 

' Androcles  and  the  Lion '  presents  the  Shavian  view  of 
primitive  Christianity,  with  some  glances  at  religion  in 
general  in  the  finely  conceived  character  of  Lavinia,  but 
its  real  attraction  consists  in  the  dramatization  of  the 
nursery  tale  which  'Sandford  and  Merton'  had  made 
familiar  to  Shaw's  own  generation.  The  Lion  (really 
the  principal  role)  and  Androcles,  both  admirably  acted, 
were  irresistibly  funny,  and  a  comic  Emperor  with  comic 
subjects  (including  the  Christian  martyrs)  contributed 
to  the  enjoyment  of  those  who  did  not  mind  the  profana- 
tion of  subjects  traditionally  sacred. 

'Pygmalion,'  "a  romance  in  five  acts,"  presents  the 
conversion  of  a  London  flower  girl  into  a  possible  duchess 
by  three  months'  training  in  phonetics.  Her  trial  ap- 
pearance in  a  London  drawing  room  provides  some  ex- 
cellent fooling,  but  the  real  delight  of  the  play  is  the 
character  of  her  father,  the  dustman  Doolittle,  spokesman 
of  the  undeserving  poor  until  a  legacy  from  a  misguided 
American  philanthropist  lands  him  in  an  unhappy  re- 
spectability.    The  suggestion  of  the  idle  dustman  may 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         145 

have  come  from  a  recollection  of  Shaw's  boyhood — a 
cynical  tramp  who  was  asked  by  Shaw's  uncle  why  he  did 
not  work  and  "frankly  replied  that  he  was  too  lazy" ;  but 
the  conception  is  worked  out  with  inimitable  humour. 
Oddly  enough,  this  burlesque  character  is  much  more 
humanized  than  the  boorish  professor  of  phonetics,  who  is 
so  indistinctly  realized  that  Shaw  had  to  add  not  merely 
a  preface  about  him,  but  a  supplementary  note  of  sixteen 
pages  to  explain  the  outcome  of  the  educational  experi- 
ment which  forms  the  centre  of  the  play. 

It  would  be  idle  to  appraise  Shaw's  dramatic  work  by 
the  standards  accepted  when  he  began  to  write  for  the 
stage,  for  his  main  purpose  was  precisely  to  remove  those 
standards  and  his  main  service  that  he  largely  succeeded. 
The  question  whether  his  stage  entertainments  are 
"plays"  belongs  to  a  past  age.  He  is  certainly  careless 
about  plot  construction,  but  as  his  aim  was  not  to  tell  a 
story  but  to  convey  ideas  an  analysis  showing  that  some 
of  his  plays  have  no  plot  and  some  very  bad  plots,  techni- 
cally considered,  would  be  beside  the  mark.  He  is  not 
without  gifts  of  characterization,  but  most  of  his  char- 
acters are  mere  burlesques,  with  just  enough  life  to  em- 
body or  convey  some  thesis  dear  to  the  author.  A  num- 
ber of  critics  and  interpreters  have  analysed  Shaw's 
philosophy  and  made  it  clear  that  he  has  a  set  of  very 
definite  ideas — that  he  is  anti-moralist,  anti-utilitarian, 
anti-Darwinist,  anti-scientist,  anti-sentimentalist,  anti- 
hedonist,  anti-militarist,  anti-vivisectionist,  and  so  on; 
on  the  positive  side,  he  is  a  vitalist,  a  mystic,  a  socialist 
(as  to  commercial  and  industrial  relations),  an  anarchist 
(as  to  personal  relations),  an  individualist,  a  realist,  an 
ascetic,  a  humanitarian,  and  a  eugenist.     The  notion 

11 


146  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

that  his  criticism  of  society  is  merely  negative  is  as  un- 
tenable as  the  older  view  that  he  is  a  mere  jester.  But 
his  wit  and  humour,  his  intellectual  keenness  and  bril- 
liance of  epigram  will  probably  continue  to  be  admired 
when  most  of  his  doctrines  have  either  been  absorbed  or 
rejected  by  the  common  sense  of  mankind. 

At  the  time  of  writing  Bernard  Shaw's  reputation  is 
under  a  cloud.  When  the  War  broke  out,  he  wrote  a 
series  of  articles  which  classed  the  British  Imperialists 
with  the  German  Junkers,  and  scoffed  at  the  idea  that 
regarding  treaties  as  "  scraps  of  paper  "  was  at  all  unusual. 
He  pictured  the  British  Lion  as  only  shamming  sleep  in 
order  to  tempt  Germany  to  provocative  action,  "and  the 
Lion,  with  a  mighty  roar,  sprang  at  last,  and  in  a  flash 
had  his  teeth  and  claws  in  the  rival  of  England,  and  will 
not  now  let  her  go  for  all  the  pacifists  or  Socialists  in  the 
world  until  he  is  either  killed  or  back  on  his  Waterloo 
pedestal  again."  Shaw  took  off  his  hat  to  the  noble  old 
beast  as  he  made  his  last  charge,  and  applauded  his 
splendid  past  and  vahant  breed;  but  in  future,  he  added, 
"we  must  fight,  not  alone  for  England,  but  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  world."  To  anyone  versed  in  Shaw's  hyper- 
bolical manner  and  capable  of  penetrating  to  the  real 
meaning  lying  behind  his  exaggerations,  there  was  little 
in  what  he  said  to  give  offence, — but  the  British  public 
was  in  no  mood  to  make  allowances  and  distinctions. 
Shaw's  utterances  were  regarded  as  lending  aid  and  com- 
fort to  the  enemy — absurdly  enough,  for  he  was  as  far 
removed  as  the  poles  from  pro-Germanism — and  his 
license  as  a  popular  entertainer  was  tacitly  withdrawn. 
Many,  even  among  his  own  followers,  held  him  blame- 
worthy in  failing  to  respond  to  the  national  emotion  and 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW         147 

assuming  an  unseasonable  attitude  of  detachment.  It 
was  a  situation  in  which  his  keen  intelhgence  did  not  make 
up  for  his  lack  of  emotional  sympathy.  It  is  the  fault  of 
all  his  work — his  characters  talk  about  love,  but  they 
never  give  the  impression  of  being  in  love,  and  their  anger 
like  their  fear  seems  to  be  put  on  from  the  outside,  often 
with  a  heavy  hand ;  they  do  not  move  from  within.  But 
the  particular  revelation  of  the  defect  at  a  critical  moment 
in  the  nation's  history  hardly  merited  the  bitter  resent- 
ment it  aroused,  and  calmer  times  will  no  doubt  bring 
back  a  juster  appreciation  of  the  offender's  real  genius. 
No  one  since  the  beginning  of  the  century  contributed  so 
powerfully  to  stimulate  thought — many  people  who  did 
not  accept  his  doctrines  were  led  to  revise  their  own 
opinions  on  the  critical  issues  he  raised — and  no  one  did 
so  much  to  make  the  stage,  not  merely  a  means  of  in- 
struction, but  the  home  of  laughter  and  delight. 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

NOVELS 

'The  Irrational  Knot.'     Written  1880.     Serial  publication  1885-7. 

American  and  English  edition  1905. 
'  Love  among  the  Artists.'     Written  1881 .    Serial  publication  1887-^8. 

American  edition  1900.    English  edition  1914. 
'Cashel    Byron's   Profession.'     Written    1885-6.    English   edition 

1886. 
'An  Unsocial  Socialist.'     Written   1883.     Serial  publication  1884. 

English  edition  1887. 

SOCIALISM 

1884  Fabian  Tract  No.  2,  '  Manifesto.' 

1885  Fabian  Tract  No.  3,  'Warning  to  provident  Landlords  and 
Capitalists.' 

1887  Articles  on  Marxian  Socialism  in  the  '  National  Reformer.' 

1888  Address  to  the  Economic  Section  of  the  British  Association. 
Published  as  'The  Transition'  with  another  chapter  on  the 
economic  basis  of  Socialism  in  a  volume  of  'Fabian  Essays' 
(1889)  edited  by  Shaw. 

1888     '  My  Friend  Fitzthunder'  in  '  To-day.' 

1891  'The  Legal  Eight  Hom-s  Question.'  A  public  debate  with 
J.  W.  Foote. 

'  The  Impossibilities  of  Anarchism.' 

1892  'The  Fabian  Society;  its  Early  History.' 

1894    'Socialism  and  Superior  Brains'  (in  'Fortnightly  Review'  for 

April). 
1896     'Socialism  for  Millionaires'  (in  'Contemporary  Review'  for 
February.     Published  as  a  Fabian  Tract,  1901). 
'  The  Illusions  of  Socialism.' 
1904     '  Fabianism  and  the  Fiscal  Question.' 

'  The  Common  Sense  of  Municipal  Trading.' 
1914     'The  Case  for  Equality.'     An  Address  to  the  Political  and 
Economic  Circle  of  the  National  Liberal  Club. 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW  149 

CRITICISM 

1891  'The  Quintessence  of  Ibsenism. '  New  edition  'Now  com- 
pleted to  the  Death  of  Ibsen,'  1913. 

1896  'A  Degenerate's  View  of  Nordau'  in  New  York  'Liberty.' 
Published  as  'The  Sanity  of  Art:  An  Exposure  of  the  current 
Nonsense  about  Artists  being  Degenerate,'  revised,  with  new 
preface,  1908. 

1898    '  The  Perfect  Wagnerite.' 

1906  '  Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays,'  selected  from  the  '  Saturday 
Review '  by  James  Huneker. 

PLAYS 

1893  'Widowers'  Houses'  (Independent  Theatre  Series  of  Plays, 
No.  2),  written  1885-92,  produced  1892,  first  of  three  'Un- 
pleasant Plays'  (1898)  including 

'The  Philanderer'  (written  1893,  produced  1907)  and 
*Mrs.  Warren's  Profession'  (written  1894,  produced  1902). 
1898    'Arms  and  the  Man'  (written  and  produced  1894),  published 
together  with  'Candida'  (written  1894-5,  produced  1897), 
'The  Man  of  Destiny'  (written  1895,  produced  1897),  and 
'You  Never  Can  Tell'  (written  1896,  produced  1900)  as  the 
second  volume  of  '  Plays  Pleasant  and  Unpleasant.' 
1901     '  Three  Plays  for  Puritans ' : 

'The  Devil's  Disciple,'  written  1897,  produced  1899. 

*  Csesar  and  Cleopatra,'  written  1898,  produced  1899. 
'Captain  Brassboimd's  Conversion,'  written  1899,  produced 

1902. 
1903     '  Man  and  Superman.' 

1907  '  John  Bull's  Other  Island,'  written  and  produced  1904. 

*  Major  Barbara,'  written  and  produced  1905. 

'How  he  Lied  to  her  Husband,'  written  1904,  produced  1905. 
1909    'Press  Cuttings.' 
1911     'The  Doctor's  Dilemma,'  written  and  produced  1906. 

'Getting  Married,'  written  and  produced  1908. 

'The  Shewing-up  of  Blanco  Posnet,'  written  and  produced 
1909. 
1914     '  Misalliance,'  written  and  produced  1910. 

'The  Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets,'  written  and  produced  1910. 


150  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

'Fanny's  First  Play/  written  and  produced  191L 
'Androcles  and  the  Lion,'  written  1912;  produced  1913. 
'Over-ruled,'  written  1912;  produced  1913. 
'Pygmalion,'  written  1912;  produced  1913. 
'Great  Catherine,'  written  1912;  produced  1913. 

There  are  books  about  Shaw  by  Holbrook  Jackson  (1906),  Ren^e 
M.  Deacon  (1910),  G.  K.  Chesterton  (1910),  A.  Henderson  (1911), 
Joseph  McCabe  (1914),  P.  P.  Howe  (1915),  John  Pahner  (1915), 
Richard  E.  Burton  (1916),  Herbert  Skimpole  (1918) ;  in  French,  by 
Charles  Cestre  (1912),  and  Augustin  Hamon  (1913),  the  latter  trans- 
lated by  Eden  and  Cedar  Paul  (1916). 


CHAPTER  VIII 

RUDYARD  KIPLING  (1865-         ) 

British  Imperialism  might  be  traced  back  to  the  Ehza- 
bethan  Age  or  even  earHer,  but  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century  it  awoke  to  a  new  consciousness.  In 
politics  this  movement  is  associated  with  the  names  of 
Beaconsfield,  Chamberlain  and  Cecil  Rhodes;  in  the 
academic  life  of  the  time  with  that  of  Professor  Seeley; 
but  the  man  who  gave  the  new  imperialism  its  hold  on 
the  hearts  of  English-speaking  people  was  Rudyard 
Kiphng.  He  was  born  at  Bombay  in  the  Anglo-Indian 
community  to  which  the  imperial  spirit  is  as  natural  as 
the  air  they  breathe.  His  father  was  professor  of  archi- 
tectural sculpture  at  the  British  school  of  art  there  and 
Bombay  correspondent  of  the  Allahabad  'Pioneer.' 
Kipling's  mother  and  sister  later  published  a  joint  vol- 
ume of  verses,  and  one  can  well  beheve  the  testimony  that 
"the  Kipling  family  were  delightful  people,  all  clever 
and  artistic  in  their  tastes,  and  the  kindest  and  most 
gracious  family  I  have  ever  known."  Both  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Kipling  were  children  of  English  Wesley  an  ministers 
and  to  the  religious  atmosphere  of  his  home  KipHng  owes 
the  famiharity  with  the  Bible  which  is  one  of  his  most 
effective  literary  resources.  Another  influence  was  that 
of  the  native  nurse  from  whom  he  learnt  Hindustani,  and 
thus  obtained  a  first  hand  knowledge  of  Indian  life,  to 
which  his  father,  an  enthusiastic  student  of  Indian  art 
and  mythology,  and  later  the  author  of  '  Beast  and  Man 

151 


152         '  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

in  India,'  no   doubt   contributed   powerfully.     Kipling 
says  in  the  preface  to '  Life's  Handicap ' : 

"These  tales  have  been  collected  from  all  places,  and  all  sorts  of 
people,  from  priests  in  the  Chubdra,  from  Ala  Yar  the  carver,  Jiwun 
Singh  the  carpenter,  nameless  men  on  steamers  and  trains  round  the 
world,  women  spinning  outside  their  cottages  in  the  twilight,  officers 
and  gentlemen  now  dead  and  buried,  and  a  few,  but  these  are  the  very 
best,  my  father  gave  me. " 

Kipling's  schooldays,  of  which  he  has  given  us  a  ro- 
mantic account  in  'Stalky  &  Co.,'  were  spent  in  England, 
but  the  same  influences  were  at  work,  for  the  United 
Services  College  at  Westward  Ho,  North  Devon,  to  which 
he  went,  is  a  favourite  resort  for  the  children  of  Anglo- 
Indians.  He  won  the  prize  for  English  Literature, 
edited  the  school  magazine,  and  contributed  to  it  imita- 
tions of  Browning  and  Tennyson.  A  poem  entitled 
'Ave  Imperatrix'  written  by  him  on  the  occasion  of  the 
last  attempt  on  the  life  of  Queen  Victoria  in  1882  shows  at 
once  his  facility  and  the  drift  of  his  youthful  thought : — 

"Such  greeting  as  should  come  from  those 
Whose  fathers  faced  the  Sepoy  hordes, 
Or  served  you  in  the  Russian  snows, 
And,  dying,  left  their  sons  their  swords. 

"And  all  are  bred  to  do  your  will 
By  land  and  sea — wherever  flies 
The  flag,  to  fight  and  follow  still 
And  work  your  Empire's  destinies. " 

When  Kipling  returned  to  India  at  the  age  of  eighteen, 
his  father  was  Principal  of  the  school  of  art  at  Lahore, 
and  there  he  began  his  professional  career  on  the  staff  of 
the  'Civil  and  Military  Gazette.'  He  was  an  untiring 
worker  and  found  opportunity  for  varied  experiences; 


RUDYARD  laPLING  153 

his  reporting  assignments  brought  him  into  coptact  with 
all  classes  of  the  native  and  Anglo-Indian  population, 
and  he  had  also  abundant  practice  in  journalistic  writing 
of  almost  every  kind,  his  daily  duties  including: 

"To  prepare  for  press  all  the  telegrams  of  the  day; 
"To  provide  all  the  extracts  and  paragraphs; 
"To  make  headed  articles  out  of  official  reports,  etc.; 
"To  write  such  editorial  notes  as  he  might  have  time  for; 
"To  look  generally  after  all  sports,  outstation,  and  local  intelli- 
gence. 

"  To  read  all  proofs  except  the  editorial  matter." 

The  Duke  of  Connaught,  then  military  commander  of 
the  North  Western  district  of  India,  became  interested  in 
KipHng  during  a  visit  to  the  home  of  his  parents,  and  asked 
him  if  there  was  anything  he  could  do  for  him.  "  I  would 
like,  sir,  to  live  with  the  army  for  a  time,  and  go  to  the 
frontier  to  write  up  Tommy  Atkins."  Permission  was 
readily  given,  and  Rudyard  KipUng  has  been  "writing 
up  Tommy  Atkins  "  ever  since.  Many  of  his  early  poems 
and  stories  were  done  as  part  of  his  journaUstic  task,  and 
he  had  a  share  in  two  books  pubHshed  by  members  of  the 
KipUng  family  in  1884  and  1885,  but  the  real  beginning 
of  his  Uterary  career  may  be  dated  from  the  pubhcation 
in  1886  of  'Departmental  Ditties'  as  "a  lean  oblong 
docket,  wire-stitched,  to  imitate  a  D.  O.  government  en- 
velope, printed  on  brown  paper  and  secured  with  red 
tape."  'Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills'  appeared  in  an 
equally,  modest  fashion  in  1888,  and  was  followed  in  the 
same  year  by  six  other  volumes  of  short  stories  of  Anglo- 
Indian  life.  Both  prose  and  verse  met  with  a  cordial 
reception  in  the  Anglo-Indian  community  to  which  they 
specially  appealed,   and  Sir  William  Hunter  in   1888 


154  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

warned  the  British  pubhc  of  "a  new  Uterary  star  of  no 
mean  magnitude  rising  in  the  East,"  but  in  England  the 
warning  passed  unheeded.  The  seven  Uttle  paper-bound 
volumes  issued  by  Messrs.  A.  H.  Wheeler  &  Co.  of  Alla- 
habad in  'The  Indian  Railway  Library'  included  "certain 
passages  in  the  hves  and  adventures  of  Privates  Terence 
Mulvaney,  Stanley  Ortheris,  and  John  Learoyd"  (among 
them  'The  Taking  of  Lungtungpen'),  such  stories  of 
horror  as  'The  Strange  Ride  of  Morrowbie  Jukes'  and 
'The  Man  Who  Would  be  King,'  and  tales  of  child  Hfe 
such  as  'The  Story  of  Muhammed  Din,'  and  'The  Drums 
of  the  Fore  and  Af  t. '  It  is  a  record  not  merely  of  promise, 
but  of  remarkable  achievement,  especially  when  it  is 
remembered  that  Kipling  wrote  many  of  these  stories 
while  yet  in  his  teens.  'The  Phantom  Rickshaw'  was 
pubhshed  in  '  The  Quartette '  in  1885,  when  he  was  only 
twenty,  and  no  less  than  twenty-eight  out  of  the  forty 
stories  in  'Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills'  appeared  in  the 
Lahore  'Civil  and  MiUtary  Gazette,'  which  he  left  in 
1887  for  the  Allahabad  'Pioneer.' 

It  was  with  this  substantial  literary  baggage  that  in 
1889  Kiphng  set  out  for  England  by  way  of  Japan  and 
San  Francisco.  He  was  still  on  the  staff  of  the  '  Pioneer' 
and  the  articles  he  sent  back  were  afterwards  published 
under  the  titles  '  Letters  of  Marque '  and  '  From  Sea  to 
Sea.'  He  did  journalistic  work  in  San  Francisco  and 
after  his  arrival  in  New  York  interviewed  Mark  Twain 
for  the  'Herald';  but  for  his  literary  wares  he  found  no 
market  in  either  city;  American  publishers  knew  and 
cared  as  little  about  India  as  the  American  public.  In 
London  he  met  with  the  same  cold  reception  until  a 
happy  chance  directed  Edmund  Yates  of  the  'World,'  an 


RUDYARD  KIPLING  155 

enterprising  journalist  always  on  the  lookout  for  some 
new  thing,  to  seek  the  Anglo-Indian  writer  in  his  obscure 
lodgings.  The  'World'  interview  led  to  a  notice  of 
Kipling's  Indian  booklets  in  the  'Times/  and  'Macmil- 
lan's  Magazine'  published  in  one  number  in  1890  'The 
Incarnation  of  Krishna  Mulvaney'  and  'A  Ballad  of 
East  and  West.'  It  was  at  once  recognized  that  a  writer 
had  arisen  in  English  literature  of  real  genuis,  remarkable 
not  merely  for  the  fresh  fields  he  opened  up  (Anglo-Indian 
life  had  been  treated  in  fiction  before)  but  for  a  new  spirit 
and  artistic  faculties  of  no  mean  order. 

The  time  was  ripe  for  a  reviving  breath  from  a  new 
quarter.  Romanticism  had  worn  itself  out,  and  the 
cheerful  meliorism  of  the  early  Victorian  time  was  out  of 
fashion.  Looking  back,  we  see  the  beginnings  of  a  new 
era,  but  at  the  time  the  predominant  cult  was  a  self- 
centred  sestheticism.  Walter  Pater  in  the  revised  edition 
of  '  Studies  of  the  Renaissance,'  published  in  1888,  had  set 
forth  the  latest  gospel : 

"A  counted  number  of  pulses  only  is  given  to  us  of  a  variegated, 
dramatic  life.  How  may  we  see  in  them  all  that  is  to  be  seen  in  them 
by  the  finest  senses?  How  shall  we  pass  most  swiftly  from  point  to 
point,  and  be  present  always  at  the  focus  where  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  vital  forces  unite  in  their  purest  energy?  To  burn  always  with 
this  hard,  gem-hke  flame,  to  maintain  this  ecstasy,  is  success  in  life." 

The  French  Decadents  found  English  imitators,  who 
carried  the  search  for  mere  sensations  still  further,  and 
sestheticism  passed  into  sheer  dandyism.  The  restless 
curiosity  of  Aubrey  Beardsley  was  as  much  a  pose  as  the 
self-conscious  boredom  of  Oscar  Wilde.  "The  first  duty 
of  life  is  to  be  as  artificial  as  possible;  what  the  second 
duty  is  no  one  has  as  yet  discovered" — such  flashy  epi- 


156  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

grams  passed  not  merely  as  wit,  but  as  wisdom.  Wilde's 
tragic  downfall  was  hardly  needed  to  convince  the  public 
of  the  hollowness,  as  well  as  the  unwholesomeness,  of  the 
movement,  which  never  had  any  real  hold  except  on  a 
very  small  set,  but  the  advent  of  a  new  writer  who  cared 
more  about  life  than  about  art  and  who  expressed  himself, 
sometimes  humorously,  sometimes  vigorously,  but  always 
in  a  way  everyone  could  understand  was  hailed  with  en- 
thusiasm by  critics  and  populace.  Kipling's  immediate 
success  was  enormous,  enough  to  turn  the  head  of  a  young 
author  less  intent  on  getting  out  all  he  had  in  him. 

Acknowledged  forthwith  as  the  greatest  master  of  the 
short  story  in  English,  Kipling  was  challenged  to  attempt 
the  more  difficult  art  of  the  novelist.  In  response  he 
wrote  '  The  Light  that  Failed, '  with  a  happy  ending  for 
the  supposed  susceptibiUties  of  the  American  public,  and 
a  more  tragic  one  for  the  stronger  nerves  of  the  British. 
It  was  dramatized,  and  the  stage  version  helped  to  spread 
Kipling's  fame  further,  but  while  the  public  applauded, 
the  critics  ruled  that  he  had  not  succeeded  and  must  try 
again. 

For  the  time  being,  Kipling  had  to  be  content  with  his 
acknowledged  mastery  of  the  short  story,  emphasized  in 
1891  by  the  publication  of  a  new  volume,  '  Life's  Handi- 
cap,' including  'The  Courting  of  Dinah  Shad,'  'On 
Greenhow  Hill,'  'The  Man  Who  Was,'  'At  the  End  of 
the  Passage,'  'The  Mark  of  the  Beast,'  and  'Namgay 
Doola' — to  mention  only  a  few  popular  favourites.  He 
asserted  meanwhile  his  supremacy  as  a  verse  writer  in  the 
'Barrack  Room  Ballads,'  which  at  once  caught  the  popular 
fancy,  and  were  sung  or  recited  all  over  the  English- 
speaking  world.     About  the  same  time  he  enlarged  his 


RUDYARD  KIPLING  157 

knowledge  of  the  Empire  by  a  tour  in  South  Africa, 
Austraha  and  New  Zealand,  and  married  an  American 
lady,  building  himself  a  house  at  Brattleboro,  Vermont, 
which  was  his  home  for  the  next  five  years.  With  his 
wife's  brother,  Wolcott  Balestier,  he  wrote  a  long  story 
of  adventure,  'The  Naulahka,'  which  was  judged  much 
inferior  to  his  unaided  work.  The  next  volume  of  short 
stories,  'Many  Inventions,'  revealed  a  new  phase  of  his 
genius  in  his  power  to  reveal  the  romantic  side  of  our 
mechanical  civilization,  and  then  came  in  quick  secession 
the  two  'Jungle  Books,'  developed  out  of  the  suggestion 
of  Mowgli,  the  boy  brought  up  by  the  wolves,  and  in  their 
own  way  the  best  romantic  animal  stories  ever  written. 
All  this  was  done  before  Kipling  was  thirty — an  as- 
tounding achievement  which  should  be  borne  in  mind 
by  those  who  lament  the  comparative  barrenness  of  his 
later  manhood.  He  was  perhaps  the  most  remarkable 
instance  in  English  fiction  of  early  maturity,  for  by  this 
time  his  genius  had  taken  its  characteristic  bent  and  his 
style  was  fully  developed  in  all  its  sinewy  strength  and 
directness.  The  defects  of  his  qualities  were  established 
and  have  remained  unchanged — a  love  of  striking,  even 
brutal  contrasts,  the  worship  of  mere  force,  a  lack  of 
sympathy  for  civilizations  outside  the  English  pale,  and 
inability  to  render  the  finer  sides  of  life  within  it.  In 
spite  of  the  apparent  range  and  variety  of  his  characters, 
the  gentler  and  more  intellectual  men  and  women  who 
represent  the  human  race  in  its  highest  development  are 
always  inadequately  realized,  and  often  grotesquely 
caricatured.  His  psychology  is  never  subtle,  and  he 
succeeds  best  with  primitive  peoples,  children,  and  the 
coarser  specimens  of  civilized   humanity.     Even   with 


158  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  military  and  official  classes  whom  he  knows  best, 
altogether  apart  from  the  cheap  cynicism  which  marred 
his  earliest  work,  there  is  a  hard  and  artificial  smartness 
in  their  way  of  talking  and  a  narrowness  in  their  view  of 
life  which  does  them  less  than  justice.  His  common  sol- 
diers have  an  exaggerated  brutality  which  is  unnecessary 
to  set  off  their  real  qualities  of  hardihood  and  faithful- 
ness. His  colours  are  too  glaring;  his  psychology  is 
superficial;  his  characters  do  not  develop.  These  are 
objections  naturally  evoked  by  his  overwhelming  popular- 
ity and  they  cannot  be  denied.  But  when  all  has  been 
said,  there  remains  his  abounding  vitality,  his  extraor- 
dinary power  of  invention,  his  skill  in  narration  and  de- 
scription, and  his  genuine  faith  in  the  simple  virtues  which 
have  made  the  English-speaking  race  the  leaders  of  the 
modern  world. 

His  later  verse  took  on  an  added  richness  and  depth  of 
tone  in  'The  Seven  Seas'  and  'The  Five  Nations,'  and 
'The  Recessional'  reflected  with  sustained  seriousness 
the  sense  of  imperial  responsibility  and  the  love  of  justice 
and  freedom — not  the  mere  rehance  on  force  which  has 
sometimes  seemed  to  be  the  centre  of  his  thought.  A 
closer  acquaintance  with  the  quieter  scenery  of  Southern 
England  and  the  gentler  sides  of  English  life — for  the 
last  twenty  years  he  has  lived  at  Rottingdean  in  Sussex — 
enlarged  his  horizon  and  tempered  his  original  inclination 
to  dwell  on  the  coarser  and  more  brutal  sides  of  things. 
His  sense  of  humour,  always  rich  and  strong,  was  de- 
veloped and  refined.  The  'Just  So  Stories'  breathed  a 
new  and  more  homely  charm,  which  was  continued,  with 
some  loss  of  freshness,  in  '  Puck  of  Pook's  Hill'  and  '  Re- 
wards and  Fairies.' 


RUDYARD  KIPLING  159 

The  South  African  situation  in  1897-8  took  KipUng 
again  across  the  sea,  and  the  Boer  War  brought  new 
material  to  his  hand,  which  had  by  no  means  lost  its 
cunning.  On  his  return  to  England  he  published  a  new 
volume  of  short  stories,  'The  Day's  Work/  but  he  had 
not  relinquished  the  ambition  of  writing  a  good  novel. 
'Stalky  &  Co.'  (1899)  was  a  long  story  of  school  life, 
which  won  cordial  appreciation  from  some  of  his  old  ad- 
mirers, but  was  severely  criticized  by  others  as  falling  short 
not  only  in  some  matters  of  taste,  but  in  its  general  concep- 
tion. Undaunted,  he  returned  to  the  field  in  which  he 
had  won  his  first  success,  and  in  1901  published  'Kim,' 
a  well-sustained  novel  touching  upon  the  deeper  as  well 
as  the  more  picturesque  phases  of  Indian  life,  and  uni- 
versally acclaimed  as  his  masterpiece  in  fiction. 

It  is  too  soon  to  pass  any  permanent  judgment  upon 
KipHng's  genius,  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  he  will  take  an 
abiding  place  in  literature  as  one  of  the  most  vigorous 
and  original  writers  of  his  time.  Though  he  was  by  no 
means  the  first  to  find  romantic  material  in  India  and 
the  Colonies,  he  made  English-speaking  people  conscious 
of  their  imperial  inheritance  to  a  degree  and  to  an  extent 
unknown  before.  For  good  or  ill  he  was  a  potent  force 
in  the  development  of  the  imperialistic  spirit,  with  its 
high  ambitions  and  heavy  responsibilities.  'The  Re- 
cessional' shows  that  he  is  not  unaware  of  the  graver 
side  of  the  creed  of  power  he  has  preached.  Of  the  sin- 
cerity and  forcefulness  of  his  utterance  there  can  be  no 
question. 


160  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1884  '  Echoes  by  Two  Writers '  (Lahore) . 

1885  'The  Christmas  Quartette' (Lahore).     (London  1897.) 

1886  'Departmental  Ditties' (Lahore).     (London  1897.) 
^1888  'Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills'  (Calcutta).     (London  1890.) 

•^  'Soldiers  Three.'     'The  Story  of  the  Gadsbys.'     'In  Black 

and  White'  (Calcutta).     (Three  volumes  in  one,  London,  1895.) 

'Under   the    Deodars.'     'The   Phantom   Rickshaw.'    'Wee 

Willie  Winkie'  (Calcutta).     (Three  volumes  in  one,  London, 

1895.) 

1890  (U.  S.)  '  The  Light  That  Failed '  (London  1891). 

1891  '  The  City  of  Dreadful  Night.' 
""^              '  Life's  Handicap.' 

1891-2  'TheNaulahka'  (With  Wolcott  Balestier). 

-^  1892    '  Barrack  Room  Ballads.' 
y^   1893     '  Many  Inventions.' 

^  1894    'The  Jungle  Book.' 
-'^    1895    'The  Second  Jungle  Book.' 
-   '    1896    'The  Seven  Seas.' 

1897  '  Captains  Courageous.' 

1898  'The  Day's  Work.' 
'A  Fleet  in  Being.' 
'Stalky  &  Co.' 
'Kim.' 

'  Just  So  Stories.' 
'The  Five  Nations.' 

*  Traffics  and  Discoveries.' 
'Puck  of  Pook's  Hill.' 

*  Actions  and  Reactions.' 
'Rewards  and  Fairies.' 


-</^1911     'A  School  History  of  England'  (With  0.  R.  L.  Fletcher). 
"^    1916     'Sea  Warfare.' 


y 


1917     'A  Diversity  of  Creatures.' 

There  are  many  books  about  Kipling, — a '  I'rimer, '  a  '  Guide  Book,* 
and  a  '  Dictionary,'  critical  and  biographical  studies  by  G.  F.  Monk- 
house  (1899),  Will  M.  Clemens  (1899),  Richard  Le  GaUienne  (1900), 
Cecil  Charles  (1911),  Cyril  Falls  (1915),  John  Palmer  (1915),  and 
Thurston  Hopkins  (1914  and  1916). 


/ 


CHAPTER  IX 

JOSEPH  CONRAD  (1856-) 

BY   LELAND    HALL 

Among  the  English  noveHsts  of  the  present  day  Joseph 
Conrad  is  outstanding  by  reason  of  his  extraordinary 
breadth  of  vision,  intellectual  power,  and  artistic  sin- 
cerity. It  would  be  perhaps  more  cynical  than  true  to 
say  that  these  quahties  have  stood  in  the  way  of  his  gen- 
eral popularity;  but  the  fact  remains  that  he  is  not  a 
popular  writer  in  the  sense  that  Kipling,  Wells,  and 
Bennett  are  popular.  A  comparison  between  his  work  and 
theirs  can  hardly  suggest  itself,  except  in  the  momentary 
consideration  that  he,  like  Kipling,  has  written  of  life  in 
the  far  East.  As  a  creative  artist  he  belongs  in  the  com- 
pany of  Meredith,  Hardy  and  Henry  James;  but  here, 
too,  his  conception  of  his  function  as  a  novelist,  as  well  as 
what  may  be  called  the  outlandish  character  of  much  of 
his  material,  makes  a  comparison  unlikely.  Finally, 
although  he  writes  in  English,  and  although  he  is  a  loyal 
British  subject,  he  is  by  birth  and  character  a  Pole;  and 
his  novels  are  unique  because  they  are  unmistakably  cos- 
mopoUtan. 

His  life  has  been  extraordinarily  varied.  He  was  born 
in  the  Ukraine  on  December  6th,  1856,  and  he  grew  up  in 
Poland  and  Russia  amid  the  changes  and  uncertainties 
which  it  has  been  the  unhappy  fate  of  Poland  to  undergo. 
After  the  death  of  his  parents,  for  which  the  sufferings  of 

161 

12 


1 


\\ 


162  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

disappointment  and  exile  were  largely  responsible,  he  was 
affectionately  cared  for  by  an  uncle,  his  mother's  brother. 
He  was  put  in  charge  of  an  excellent  tutor  to  be  prepared 
for  the  University  of  Cracow;  but  he  had  been  obsessed 
from  childhood  by  an  unaccountable  desire  to  go  to  sea, — 
a  desire  which  neither  the  incredulous  amazement  of  his 
relatives, .  nor  the  reasoning  of  his  tutor  served  to  abate. 
Eventually,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  just  as  he  was  ready 
to  matriculate,  he  left  Poland,  having  won  his  uncle's 
consent  to  do  so,  and  shipped  on  a  sailing  vessel  out  of 
Marseilles, — an  incorrigible  Don  Quixote.  From  then  on 
for  more  than  twenty  years  he  led  the  life  of  a  deep-water 
sailor.  In  1884  he  became  a  naturalized  British  subject, 
and  in  the  same  year  was  admitted  to  the  rank  of  Master 
Mariner  in  the  British  Merchant  Marine.  Some  ten 
years  later  the  effects  of  a  tropical  fever  compelled  him  to 
give  up  his  seafaring;  and  at  this  crucial  time  in  his  life, 
almost  by  chance,  he  submitted  to  a  publisher  the  manu- 
script of  a  novel, '  Almayer's  Folly,'  which  he  had  written 
at  odd  moments  during  several  years,  for  no  reason  he  can 
think  of.  To  his  surprise  it  was  accepted  and  published 
in  1895.  Since  then  he  has  led  in  England  the  quiet  life 
of  a  writer,  a  life  of  which  nothing  in  his  experience  up  to 
the  time  he  adopted  it  had  given  the  slightest  prediction. 
Two  things  Conrad  himself  finds  inexplicable :  that  there 
should  have  stirred  in  the  breast  of  Teodor  Jozef  Konrad 
Korzeniowksi,  a  Polish  youth  remote  from  any  suggestion 
of  the  sea,  the  irresistible  desire  to  be  a  sailor;  and  that 
Joseph  Conrad,  Master  Mariner,  should  have  turned 
writer  of  prose  tales  and  romances. 

The  success  of  Conrad's  first  novel,  written  under  such 
extraordinary  conditions,  was  in  itself  sufficiently  re- 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  163 

markable;  but  even  more  astonishing  was  his  almost 
immediate  mastery  of  the  principles  and  methods  of  the 
art  he  came  to  practise  late  in  life  and  in  a  language  not  his 
own.  The  preface  he  wrote  for  'The  Nigger  of  the  Nar- 
cissus, '  may  be  classed  with  de  Maupassant's  preface  to 
'Pierre  et  Jean'  among  the  permanent  contributions  to 
literary  theory,  especially  as  it  affects  the  art  of  modern 
fiction,  and  nothing  else  throws  so  much  light  on  Conrad's 
own  work — the  aims  he  has  in  view  and  the  means  by 
which  he  strives  to  accomplish  them. 

He  begins  with  a  very  clear  definition  of  art,  contrast- 
ing it  with  philosophy,  which  deals  with  ideas,  and 
science,  which  deals  with  facts  and  theories,  and  leads 
up  to  the  conclusion  that 

"the  artist  appeals  to  that  part  of  our  being  which  is  not  dependent 
on  wisdom;  to  that  in  us  which  is  a  gift  and  not  an  acquisition — and, 
therefore,  more  permanently  enduring.  He  speaks  to  our  capacity 
for  dehght  and  wonder,  to  the  sense  of  mystery  surrounding  our  lives: 
to  our  sense  of  pity,  and  beauty,  and  pain:  to  the  latent  feeling  of 
fellowship  with  all  creation — and  to  the  subtle  but  invincible  con- 
viction of  solidarity  that  knits  together  the  loneliness  of  innmnerable 
hearts  to  the  solidarity  in  dreams,  in  joy,  in  sorrow,  in  aspirations, 
in  illusions,  in  hope,  in  fear,  which  binds  men  to  each  other,  which 
binds  together  all  humanity — the  dead  to  the  living  and  the  living 
to  the  imborn." 

He  then  goes  on  to  j  ustify  fiction  as  an  art : 

"Fiction — if  it  at  aU  aspires  to  be  art — appeals  to  temperament. 
And  in  truth  it  must  be,  like  painting,  like  music,  hke  all  art,  the  appeal 
of  one  temperament  to  all  the  other  innumerable  temperaments  whose 
subtle  and  resistless  power  endows  passing  events  with  their  true  mean- 
ing, and  creates  the  moral,  the  emotional  atmosphere  of  the  place  and 
time.  Such  an  appeal  to  be  effective  must  be  an  impression  conveyed 
through  the  senses;  and,  in  fact,  it  cannot  be  made  in  any  other  way, 
because  temperament,  whether  individual  or  collective,  is  not  amen- 


164  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

able  to  persuasion.  All  art,  therefore,  appeals  primarily  to  the  senses, 
and  the  artistic  aim  when  expressing  itself  in  written  words  must  also 
make  its  appeal  through  the  senses,  if  its  high  desire  is  to  reach  the 
secret  spring  of  responsive  emotions.  It  must  strenuously  aspire  to  the 
plasticity  of  sculpture,  to  the  coloxir  of  painting,  and  to  the  magic 
suggestiveness  of  music — which  is  the  art  of  arts.  And  it  is  only 
through  complete  imswerving  devotion  to  the  perfect  blending  of 
form  and  substance;  it  is  only  through  an  unremitting  never-dis- 
couraged care  for  the  shape  and  ring  of  sentences  that  an  approach 
can  be  made  to  plasticity,  to  colour;  and  the  light  of  magic  sugges- 
tiveness may  be  brought  to  play  for  an  evanescent  instant  over  the 
commonplace  surface  of  words:  of  the  old,  old  words,  worn  thin,  de- 
faced by  ages  of  careless  usage. 

"  The  sincere  endeavour  to  accomplish  that  creative  task,  to  go  as  far 
on  that  road  as  his  strength  wiU  carry  him,  to  go  imdeterred  by  falter- 
ing, weariness,  or  reproach,  is  the  only  valid  justification  for  the  worker 
in  prose.  And  if  his  conscience  is  clear,  his  answer  to  those  who,  in 
the  fulness  of  a  wisdom  that  looks  for  immediate  profit,  demand 
specifically  to  be  edified,  consoled,  amused;  who  demand  to  be 
promptly  improved  or  encouraged,  or  frightened,  or  shocked,  or 
charmed,  must  nm  thus: — My  task  which  I  am  trying  to  achieve  is, 
by  the  power  of  the  written  word,  to  make  you  hear,  to  make  you 
feel — it  is,  before  all,  to  make  you  see.  That — and  no  more,  and  it  is 
everything.  If  I  succeed,  you  shall  find  there  according  to  your 
deserts:  encouragement,  consolation,  fear,  charm — ^all  you  demand 
and,  perhaps,  also  that  glimpse  of  truth  for  which  you  have  forgotten 
to  ask." 

Every  one  of  Conrad's  novels  and  stories  shows  a 
fidelity  to  the  ideal  thus  eloquently  set  forth.  Books  so 
conceived  and  executed  do  not  fail  to  have  definite  and 
rather  unusual  characteristics,  some  of  which  are  at  first 
reading  disconcerting.  In  the  earlier  works  his  style,  for 
instance,  is  too  consciously  sonorous.  It  must  be  said, 
however,  that  this  is  due  not  so  much  to  an  excess  of 
"  care  for  the  shape  and  ring  of  sentences"  as  to  the  fact 
that  he  has  yet  to  realize  that  English  prose  has  not  the 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  165 

crystal  resonance  of  French.  Obviously  this  early  style 
is  founded  on  French  models.  The  later  works  do  not 
contain  such  conscious  profusion  of  rhythm  and  regular 
cadence,  though  even  in  '  Victory'  there  is  often  a  suspi- 
cion of  timbre  that  is  not  Enghsh. 

His  desire  to  give  to  fiction  as  an  art  something  of  the 
plasticity  of  sculpture  may  account  in  a  general  way  for 
another,  and  to  some  a  more  disconcerting  characteristic, 
which  becomes  more  and  more  prominent  in  the  novels  and 
stories  after  '  Lord  Jim.'  It  is  an  extremely  complicated 
method  of  telling  a  story  by  means  of  several  observers 
and  narrators.  From  one  point  of  view  this  is  Conrad's 
compromise  with  the  convention  of  the  novelist's  omnis- 
cience; for  compromise  it  is,  though  in  'Chance'  he  has 
achieved  such  results  with  it  as  to  raise  very  pressingly 
the  question  whether  or  not  he  has  broken  quite  away 
from  tradition  and  created  a  new  art  of  the  novel.  So 
far  as  story-telling  is  concerned,  the  simple  assumption 
by  a  novelist  of  a  complete  knowledge  of  characters, 
motives,  causes,  and  effects  makes  easy  going  for  both 
the  writer  and  the  reader,  and  is  indeed  desirable  for  the 
sake  of  smoothness  in  narration.  Conrad  himself  has 
assumed  such  knowledge  in  his  first  three  novels,  in  '  The 
Secret  Agent, '  and  in  many  of  his  short  stories.  But  for 
the  presentation  of  '  Lord  Jim '  he  seems  to  have  felt  the 
need  of  a  method  that  would  give  more  relief,  that  would 
make  his  characters  stand  out  from  their  background, 
and  would  endow  them  with  a  movement  more  varied 
than  that  of  a  marionette  pulled  in  a  straight  groove 
across  the  stage.  With  this  aim  in  view  he  created 
Captain  Marlow.  Marlow  is  a  man  past  middle  age, 
whose  wide  experience  of  life,  similar  to  Conrad's  own, 


( 


ii 


166  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

has  left  him  with  a  detached  but  thoroughly  kind  interest 
in  human  beings.  He  pieces  the  story  of  Jim  out  of 
what  he  has  actually  seen  of  him,  what  he  has  heard,  and 
what  he  has  thought.  His  tale  is,  of  course,  often  straight 
narration,  but  the  novel  of  'Lord  Jim'  is  the  story  of 
Marlow  telling  the  story  of  Jim;  and  it  is  the  creation  of 
Jim  out,  as  it  were,  of  Marlow,  and  at  the  same  time  the 
creation  of  Marlow  wholly  apart  from  Jim,  that  give  Jim 
all  but  the  breath  of  life.  Unfortunately  the  novel 
(which  still  retains  its  undeserved  fame  of  being  Conrad's 
masterpiece)  suffers  rather  seriously  from  Marlow 's  in- 
terminable psychological  speculations.  Conrad  has 
given  him  much  too  free  a  rein ;  and  all  such  narrators  are 
of  the  kind  that  given  an  inch  will  take  an  ell. 

But  his  handling  of  Marlow  and  the  like  has  since  be- 
come prodigiously  skilful.  In  'Chance'  he  has  employed 
at  least  four  narrators:  Marlow,  Captain  Powell,  and  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Fyne,  and  there  are  others  besides.  Three  of 
these  characters  play  a  part  in  the  novel  quite  distinct 
from  their  parts  as  narrators;  yet  Conrad  has  handled  all 
the  complications  which  such  a  method  must  occasion  so 
smoothly  that  the  reader  hardly  realizes  the  difficulties 
that  the  author  has  surmounted.  They  are  difficulties 
with  which  most  authors  would  not  choose  to  burden 
themselves.  Indeed,  Henry  James  wrote  that  'Chance' 
had  proved  Conrad  the  votary  of  the  "way  to  do  a  thing 
that  shall  undergo  most  doing."  But  Conrad's  success 
is  beyond  question,  and  the  vindication  of  the  method 
may  be  found  in  the  intricate  and  perfect  counterfeit  of 
reality  which  'Chance'  presents.  It  is  a  method  which 
has  given  to  the  novel  not  a  little  of  the  plasticity  of 
sculpture.     'Chance'  as  a  whole  is  a  perfectly  rounded 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  167 

work  of  art,  art  in  the  abstract  sense  of  form  and  structure. 
Moreover,  the  two  central  figures,  Flora  de  Barral  and 
Captain  Anthony,  are  moulded,  as  it  were,  by  the  subtle 
touches  of  many  pairs  of  hands,  the  source  of  whose  single 
inspiration — Conrad's  high  creative  force — is  all  but  con- 
cealed by  the  method.  Of  course,  these  characters  are 
more  than  statues;  they  have  been  endowed  with  facul- 
ties of  movement  and  sensation.  And  the  greatest  tri- 
umph of  the  method  is  that  they  move,  not  against  a 
background,  but  in  the  midst  of  a  circumfluent  reality. 

It  was  perhaps  as  much  the  desire  to  present  his  charac- 
ters so  surrounded  as  the  high  artistic  aim  to  give  to  his 
novels  the  plasticity  of  sculpture  that  impelled  Conrad 
to  devise  and  perfect  the  method  of  presentation  of  which 
'Chance'  is  so  splendid  a  result.  Speaking  of  Marlow, 
who  relates  '  Heart  of  Darkness, '  he  has  said : 

"To  him  the  meaning  of  an  episode  was  not  inside  like  a  kernel, 
but  outside,  enveloping  the  tale,  which  brought  it  out  only  as  a  glow 
brings  out  a  haze,  in  the  likeness  of  one  of  these  misty  halos  that  are 
made  sometimes  visible  by  the  spectral  illumination  of  moonshine. " 

Such  an  envelopment  of  the  chief  episodes  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  characteristics  of  nearly  all  Conrad's  novels 
and  stories. 

Less  rich  in  suggestion  to  fellow-craftsmen  than  this 
perfected  method,  but  not  less  important  in  the  general 
effect  of  Conrad's  work,  is  his  incessant  appeal  to  the 
senses,  or  rather  to  the  sense  imagination,  of  his  readers. 
He  has  set  before  himself  the  task  of  making  his  readers  feel, 
hear,  and  above  all  see.  Therefore  he  is  as  scrupulously  pre- 
cise in  naming  a  colour,  in  tracing  a  line,  and  in  describing 
a  sound,  a  taste,  or  a  smell,  as  Meredith  in  polishing  an 
aphorism,  or  Henry  James  in  analyzing  a  manner;  and 


168  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

he  demands  of  the  reader  as  concentrated  an  effort  to 
imagine  as  Meredith  or  James  to  comprehend.  For  one 
who  has  made  this  effort  his  novels  are  uniquely  vivid. 
The  memories  retained  of  them  are  as  of  things  actually 
seen  and  heard,  and  in  some  places  even  experienced. 
His  work  necessarily  abounds  in  passages  of  description, 
and  a  study  of  his  development  in  the  mastery  of  this 
special  art  of  writing  would  be  interesting.  The  descrip- 
tions in  the  early  works  often  suffer  from  the  conscious- 
ness of  style.  'Youth,'  for  example,  one  of  the  most 
poetic  of  his  stories,  is  marred  by  monotonousness  of 
rhythm  and  cadence.  One  suspects  deliberateness  in  the 
heaping  on  of  colour.  As  his  style  grows  more  flexible,  his 
descriptions  become  less  sensuous  but  more  vivid,  less 
massive  but  more  finely  brilliant.  Yet  it  must  be  added 
that  he  has  never  written  finer  description  than  in  'The 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus, '  or  anything  more  vivid  than 
the  account  of  the  passage  of  the  'Patna'  (*  Lord  Jim'),  or 
than  that  of  Jim  himself  before  the  court  of  inquiry.  He 
handles  colour  as  a  painter;  and  adds  to  this  such  a  sug- 
gestion of  sound  and  smell  as  to  convey  to  his  readers  in 
many  passages  the  sensation  of  life  itself. 

This  emphasis  on  the  sensible  attributes  of  all  he  wishes 
to  write  about  is  a  marked  positive  result  of  his  concep- 
tion of  the  function  of  the  novelist  striving  for  artistic 
expression.  A  negative  result,  not  less  marked,  is  the 
absence  from  his  books  of  much  of  what  most  noveUsts 
have  deemed  suitable  matter  for  novels.  Of  criticism, 
of  doctrine,  and  of  general  philosophy  his  novels  contain 
little  or  nothing.  He  suggests  no  reform;  he  champions 
no  ideal.  For  the  most  part  he  withholds  both  commen- 
dation and  blame  from  his  characters.     Indeed  it  would 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  169 

be  hard  to  find  traces  of  even  a  personal  sympathy  with 
more  than  two  or  three  of  the  many  men  and  women  he 
has  created.  As  an  artist  he  makes  no  compromise  with 
Hf e.  To  this  extent  he  is  a  reahst ;  and  if  he  were  nothing 
more,  an  estimate  of  his  work  might  end  herewith  admira- 
tion for  its  vividness  and  power.     But  he  is  more.  • 

The  reahst  deals  with  local  actualities.  The  reality  he  * 
portrays  is  circumscribed.  He  may  achieve  perfect 
verisimilitude,  but  he  reveals  no  more  than  a  fragment  of 
the  truth.  In  Conrad's  work  there  is  no  hint  of  such 
circumscription.  His  life  upon  the  sea  and  his  varied 
experience  in  many  lands  and  among  many  kinds  of 
people  have  given  him  an  extraordinary  breadth  of  vision. 
The  fragments  of  truth  he  has  chosen  here  and  there  to 
reveal  are  arranged  in  perspective  and  in  relation  to  all 
Ufe.  Consequently  there  are  in  his  work  qualities  of 
general  understanding  and  of  general  revelation  which, 
though  not  uncommon  in  our  best  poetry,  produce  upon 
the  ordinary  reader  of  modern  fiction  an  effect  of  strange- 
ness, u 

Yet  Conrad  is  not  a  visionary.  He  presents  life  as  it  ^ 
is.  His  characters  have  nothing  of  the  heroic,  and  they  \ 
are  extraordinarily  real.  Few  are  wholly  despicable; 
none  is  idealized.  It  can  be  said  of  none  that  here  is  a 
standard-bearer  for  the  race.  They  show  no  literary  ear- 
marks. He  has  drawn  them  without  prejudice  for  race, 
colour,  and  social  caste;  and  they  are  so  distinct  from 
each  other  that  it  is  impossible  to  generalize  about  them, 
except  to  say  that  all,  being  in  the  midst  of  hfe,  are  com- 
pelled to  struggle  against  a  force  that  is  not  benevolent. 
It  is  the  revelation  of  such  a  force,  not  visionary  but  real, 
influencing  the  lives  of  men  in  all  circumstances  and  in 


170  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

all  parts  of  the  world,  that  Conrad's  novels  and  stories 
have  accompHshed.  The  revelation  is  distinct  and  artic- 
ulate. Conrad  has  not  shown  man  miserable  in  conflict 
with  the  impersonal  forces  of  nature.  On  the  contrary, 
as  a  sailor  he  has  seen  how  men  in  ships  unite  against  the 
wind  and  sea  when  they  are  hostile,  and  become  strong 
and  noble  in  their  union.  That  force  which  brings  grief 
and  misery  upon  the  race  rises  out  of  man  himself,  out  of 
man's  greed,  which  turns  him  against  his  own  kind  and 
renders  him  distrustful,  envious,  and  cruel.  Here  is  the 
tragedy,  harshly  evident  to  the  eyes  of  the  sailor  visiting 
the  habitations  of  man  after  months  on  the  sea. 

Conrad's  novels  may  be  divided  into  three  groups.  In 
the  first  may  be  placed  the  first  four  novels,  which  deal 
almost  exclusively  with  life  in  the  eastern  archipelagoes, 
to  which  the  search  for  profit  and  gold  has  brought  the 
white  man.  The  subtle  disguises  of  western  civilization 
have  been  left  far  behind.  '  Almayer's  Folly '  tells  of  the 
slow  moral  degradation  of  a  man  who  quite  openly  sold 
himself,  who  married  a  savage  Malay  girl  for  the  sake  of 
the  money  her  protector,  the  powerful  Captain  Lingard, 
had  promised  should  go  with  her.  'The  Outcast  of  the 
Islands '  is  the  story  of  a  man  who  resorted  to  treachery 
to  get  hold  of  a  treasure  he  believed  hidden  in  the  interior 
of  Borneo,  and  who  suffered  a  terrible  vengeance  in  con- 
sequence. 'The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus'  stands  by 
itself  as  a  story  dealing  wholly  with  life  on  the  sea;  but 
even  here,  the  miserable  Donkin,  who  stirred  up  discon- 
tent and  mutiny  upon  the  ship,  Conrad  has  only  finally 
branded  as  utterly  despicable  in  an  act  of  thieving  from 
a  man  dying  alone  and  helpless.  '  Lord  Jim '  is  the  story 
of  a  man  whom  one  act  of  cowardice  drove  farther  and 


V. 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  171 

farther  from  civilization;  yet  that  act  was  due  to  the 
rottenness  of  a  steamer  which  but  for  the  hidden  greed  of 
men  had  never  sailed  the  seas  with  its  crowded  mass  of 
pilgrims. 

In  the  second  group  there  is  but  one  novel, — 'Nos- 
tromo, '  in  some  ways  the  most  remarkable  of  Conrad's 
achievements.  It  has  the  qualities  of  an  epic.  It  seems 
the  complete  expression  of  modern  life,  of  life  actuated 
by  the  far-reaching  and  powerful  spirit  of  commercial 
enterprise.  There  are  a  dozen  stories  in  it;  there  are  a 
dozen  sets  of  characters,  astonishingly  alive;  there  are 
success  and  failure,  love  and  hate,  true  patriotism 
and  selfish  scheming,  aspiration,  defiance,  tenderness, 
and  cruelty.  There  is  hardly  a  human  passion  but  plays 
its  part  in  the  intricate  tangle  of  the  action ;  but  through 
it  all  runs  the  dominating  influence  of  the  great  San  Tome 
silver  mine,  the  symbol  of  law  and  order,  the  cause  of 
revolutions,  the  source  of  tragedy.  Conrad  has  created 
a  South  American  republic  and  has  peopled  it  with  men 
and  women.  There  are  the  native  inhabitants  to  whom 
the  land  belongs,  of  partly  Spanish  and  partly  Indian 
origin;  there  are  men  and  women  of  various  European 
nationalities  who  have  drifted  there,  and  there  are  men 
who  have  come  there  on  purpose  to  develop  the  material 
possibilities  of  the  land.  The  vast  drama  of  their  lives, 
enacting  itself  for  the  most  part  between  the  mine,  back 
in  the  mountains,  and  the  town  of  Sulaco  on  the  shores 
of  the  Placid  Gulf,  Conrad  has  cast  in  the  form  of  a 
novel  for  which,  in  the  completeness  of  its  revelation  of 
modern  life,  it  would  be  perhaps  impossible  to  find  a 
parallel. 

There  are  four  novels  after  'Nostromo.'      In  three  of 


172  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

them,  'The  Secret  Agent,'  'Under  Western  Eyes,'  and 
*  Chance,'  Conrad  has  turned  his  attention  to  life  in 
Europe;  and  in  'Victory,'  the  chief  characters  have 
preserved  their  western  subtleties.  'The  Secret  Agent' 
and  '  Under  Western  Eyes '  fill  the  space  between  '  Nos- 
tromo'  on  the  one  hand  and  'Chance'  on  the  other. 
Having  in  '  Nostromo '  revealed  once  and  for  all,  and  on  a 
scale  that  is  truly  colossal,  the  motive  power  of  the  spirit 
of  avarice  in  human  affairs,  Conrad  falls  back  for  his  next 
two  novels  upon  the  concentrated  study  of  two  brief 
episodes  of  special  interest:  an  explosion  in  Greenwich, 
for  which  he  imagines  the  anarchists  in  London  are 
indirectly  responsible;  and  a  political  assassination  in 
Russia,  with  its  effect  upon  a  man  who  is  essentially 
order-loving.  The  characters  are,  Uke  all  his  characters, 
astonishingly  definite  and  alive,  but  they  are  relatively 
few  in  number.  The  range  of  interest,  too,  is  restricted, 
so  that  in  spite  of  the  brilUance  of  technique  and  the 
vitahty  of  both  novels,  'The  Secret  Agent'  and  'Under 
Western  Eyes'  may  be  taken  as  the  product  of  a  period 
of  replenishment,  that  is,  of  spiritual  replenishment,  since 
there  is  no  sign  in  either  of  flagging  energy  or  mental 
fatigue. 

Having  passed  through  this  period,  Conrad  approaches 
his  last  novels  with  a  changed,  matured,  and  ever  deepen- 
ing interest  in  the  mystery  of  human  destiny.  He  is  still 
the  reaHst  in  method,  representing  life  as  it  is.  His  draw- 
ing and  modelUng  are  still  clear  and  firm;  his  colours  still 
brilUant.  But  over  both  'Chance'  and  'Victory'  there 
play  shadows  like  those  that  fall  upon  the  land  from 
great  clouds  moving  across  the  sky.  Out  of  man's  ^reed 
has  risen  a  cloud  of  Fate,  as  the  smoke  rose  from  the 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  173 

genii's  lamp.  In  both  novels  the  instance  of  greed  from 
which  evil  has  grown  may  be  found.  That  which  first 
embittered  Flora  de  Barral,  and  which  proved  to  be  the 
origin  of  most  of  the  misery  which  she  was  forced  to 
undergo,  was  the  imprisonment  of  her  father  for  dis- 
honesty in  pursuit  of  his  financial  ambitions.  In  'Vic- 
tory' that  which  brought  evil  and  death  to  Samburan, 
a  lonely  island  whither  Axel  Heyst  had  taken  the  girl 
Lena  to  save  her  from  the  vile  persecutions  of  the  hotel 
keeper,  Schomberg,  was  a  shameless  lust  for  booty. 
But  Conrad's  interest  is  here  not  in  the  corroding  in- 
fluence of  greed  upon  those  who  have  given  way  to  it, 
but  in  the  struggle  of  unselfish  men  and  women  against 
the  general  power  of  evil  which  love  of  gain  has  turned 
loose  upon  the  world.  That  power  has  been  personified. 
Old  de  Barral,  coming  crazed  from  prison  and  full  of 
murderous  intent,  and  the  utterly  cold-blooded  and  malev- 
olent Jones  are  more  than  standard  villains  in  melo- 
drama. They  are  symbols  of  all  the  evil  in  the  world. 
Those  who  read  'Chance'  and  'Victory'  must  look  below 
the  surface  for  their  full  meaning. 

For  Conrad,  evil  is  that  power  which  turns  man  against 
his  kind,  tearing  that  bond  of  fellowship,  of  solidarity 
as  he  has  called  it,  in  which  is  man's  source  of  comfort  and 
strength.  The  tragedy  of  human  life  he  finds  in  its  lone- 
Hness,  in  that  particular  loneliness  of  man  Hving  in  the 
midst  of  his  fellows.  The  tragedy  of  Almayer's  fife  is  not 
that  it  is  passed  in  a  remote  quarter  of  the  globe,  far  from 
men  and  women  of  his  own  class  and  race,  but  that  he  has 
lost  the  power  to  feel  confidence,  that  he  regards  his  fellow 
beings  with  suspicion  and  distrust.  So  it  is  in  both 
'Chance'   and  'Victory.'     Flora  de  Barral  dares  trust 


174  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

nobody.  Hence  the  terrible  loneliness  of  her  life,  which 
all  but  warps  her  soul.  Lena,  that  pathetic  figure  of 
'Victory'  about  whom  alone  of  all  his  characters  Conrad 
has  allowed  a  radiance  to  shine,  has  from  babyhood  found 
no  honest  friend.  In  neither  of  these  wan  and  helpless 
girls  is  there  evil.     They  suffer  under  a  malignant  fate. 

If  evil  is  that  force  which  turns  man  against  his  kind, 
then  the  force  to  oppose  it  must  be  one  that  unites  the 
members  of  the  race.  Conrad  has  found  many  types  of 
such  a  force:  fideUty,  the  sense  of  obhgation,  common 
need  in  the  face  of  common  danger,  and  it  is  almost  need- 
less to  add,  love.  These  last  two  novels  are  the  story  of 
a  victory  of  love  over  fate. 

In  neither  'Chance'  nor  'Victory'  does  love  achieve 
the  radiant  triumph  of  romance.  The  victory  is  not  in 
that  opposition  has  been  wholly  overcome,  but  in  that 
two  human  beings  have  become  united  in  spite  of  fate. 
Does  that  union,  short-lived,  but  complete,  symbohze 
the  solidarity  of  the  race,  of  which  Conrad  has  written 
so  eloquently  in  the  preface  to  '  The  Nigger  of  the  Nar- 
cissus'? He  has  promised  that  if  he  succeeds  in  his  self- 
appointed  task  as  an  artist,  and  there  seems  to  be  no  rea- 
sonable doubt  that  he  has  succeeded,  we  shall  find  in  the 
result  of  his  work  what  we  look  for  in  art:  something  of 
encouragement  and  hope,  among  other  things.  On  first 
thought  there  seems  to  be  nothing  for  comfort  in  the 
gloomy  novel  of  'Chance';  and  'Victory'  is  indeed  a 
tragedy,  a  match  for '  Hamlet '  in  general  mortality.  Yet 
there  is  a  hint  in  the  title  of  the  latter  which  points  to  a 
deep  meaning  not  only  in  that  novel  but  in  all  that  Con- 
rad has  written.  It  is  a  meaning  felt  but  not  easily  per- 
ceived, for  it  envelopes  all  life  and  is  more  vague  and  more 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  175 

vast  than  the  act  of  all  living.  Conrad,  sailor,  novelist, 
realist,  fatalist,  mystic,  or  poet,  call  him  what  you  will, 
stands  revealed  by  his  work  as  a  prophet  of  one  great 
truth :  the  solidarity  of  the  human  race,  "masked  by  social 
distinctions,  forgotten  in  national  prejudice,  terribly  rent 
by  selfishness  and  greed,  but  eternally  indestructible. 

Notwithstanding  the  objective  artistry  of  Conrad's 
work,  every  page  he  has  written  is  infused  with  a  vivid 
personality.  The  minute  care  in  choice  of  words  and 
the  prolonged  yet  intense  pursuit  of  sensible  revelation, 
abstract  craftsmanship  in  themselves,  are  brilliant  tokens 
of  the  craftsman.  Rigorous  fidelity  to  an  artistic  ideal 
gives  to  his  tales  and  romances  an  unmistakable  personal 
warmth.  Upon  the  urging  of  friends,  he  once  applied 
this  fidelity  to  the  task  of  revealing  himself,  and  the 
result — 'Some  Reminiscences,'  published  in  the  United 
States  under  the  title,  '  A  Personal  Record ' — is  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  pieces  of  autobiography  in  English.  Many 
a  self-constituted  judge  has  kicked  against  the  pricks  of 
its  seemingly  wanton  disorder.  The  pages  have  been,  to 
use  the  author's  own  words,  "charged  with  discursiveness, 
with  disregard  of  chronological  order  (which  is  in  itself 
a  crime),  with  unconventionality  of  form  (which  is  an 
impropriety) .  I  was  told  severely  that  the  public  would 
view  with  displeasure  the  informal  character  of  my  re- 
collections. 'Alas,' I  protested,  mildly.  'Could  I  begin 
with  the  sacramental  words,  "I  was  born  on  such  a 
date  in  such  a  place"?  The  remoteness  of  the  locality 
would  have  robbed  the  statement  of  all  interest.  I 
haven't  lived  through  wonderful  adventures  to  be  related 
seriatim.'" 

As  it  is  with  the  episodes  and  characters  in  his  stories. 


176  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

SO  it  is  with  this  disclosure  of  himself.  The  reader  has 
not  been  given  the  inner  secret  nakedly.  Conrad  shines 
through  his  circumstances,  giving  them  the  shape  and 
colour  which  they  have  for  us  and  by  which  the  character 
of  the  man  within  them  is  suggested.  There  are  not 
lacking  passages  of  keenly  direct  personal  expression, 
but  on  the  whole  the  most  significant  expression  is  in- 
direct, a  diffusion  of  spirit  through  transparencies  of  time 
-and  place.  Circumstance  after  circumstance,  episode 
after  episode  grow  luminous  before  the  reader.  One 
moment  it  is  a  dingy  London  boarding  house,  the  next  it 
is  a  drive  across  the  snowbound  plains  of  Poland,  the  old 
family  coachman  on  the  box  and  the  jingle  of  sleighbells 
in  the  cold  air.  Then  it  is  far  up  a  fever-haunted  tropical 
river,  or  before  an  examining  officer  of  the  British  ship- 
ping board ;  and  at  the  last,  for  a  profoundly  moving,  en- 
chanted spell,  it  is  a  boy  of  seventeen  in  a  boat  full  of 
Provengal  pilots  in  le  vieux  port,  Marseilles,  the  ancient 
houses,  the  quays,  the  waters  of  the  harbour,  the  break- 
water, the  chateau  d'lf ,  the  islets,  all  drenched  in  moon- 
light. 

"Yet,  these  memories,  put  down  without  any  regard  for  established 
conventions,  have  not  been  thrown  off  without  system  and  purpose. 
They  have  their  hope  and  their  aim.  The  hope  that  from  the  reading 
of  these  pages  there  may  emerge  at  last  the  vision  of  a  personaUty: 
the  man  behind  the  books  so  fundamentally  dissimilar  as,  for  instance, 
'Almayer's  Folly'  and  'The  Secret  Agent,'  and  yet  a  coherent,  justi- 
fiable personality  both  in  its  origin  and  in  its  action.  This  is  the 
hope.  The  immediate  aim,  closely  associated  with  the  hope,  is  to 
give  the  record  of  personal  memories  by  presenting  faithfully  the 
feelings  and  sensations  connected  with  the  WTiting  of  my  first  book 
and  with  my  first  contact  with  the  sea.  In  the  purposely  mingled 
resonance  of  this  double  strain  a  friend  here  and  there  will  perhaps 
detect  a  subtle  accord." 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  177 

The  accord  is  unmistakable.  There  is  no  dissonance 
between  the  unpremeditated  rapture  of  the  first  contact 
with  the  sea  and  the  prolonged,  groping,  mental  effort  to 
tell  the  story  of  Almayer.  Neither  is  there  between 
plastic  youth  and  man  whom  life  has  roughly  fixed ;  but 
the  note  to  which  they  are  attuned  has  a  low  ring,  though 
sweet. 

This  note  must  have  sounded  often  in  Conrad's  ear. 
*  Youth '  makes  it  poignant,  giving  it  the  romantic  sadness 
of  disillusionment.  His  last  book,  'The  Shadow  Line,' 
takes  its  key  therefrom;  but  here  there  is  no  regret  for 
illusions.  Neither  is  there  any  metaphysical  implication 
of  the  fading  of  a  glory  into  the  common  light  of  day. 

In  most  lives  the  essential  quality  of  youth  passes  slowly ; 
in  others  there  comes  an  hour  that  takes  it  suddenly 
away,  and  life  changes  sharply.  Youth  crosses  the 
Shadow  Line.  The  pleasant  gift  of  life  becomes  for  an 
instant  a  crushing  burden,  soon  lightened,  perhaps,  but 
the  remembered  weight  of  which  accompanies  man 
throughout  the  rest  of  his  days  more  intimately  than  his 
shadow.  I 

One  ventures  to  say  that  'The  Shadow  Line'  is  the        ; 
record  of  an  actual  personal  experience.     It  is   called  a       \ 
confession,  and  it  is   written  in  a  familiar,   colloquial        ^ 
style.    In  the  absence  of  conscious  shape  and  ring  of  sen- 
tences, one  finds  a  material  corollary  to  the  differences  in 
mood  and  conclusion  which  distinguish  it  from  '  Youth. ' 
The  earlier  work  is  fervid,  sensuously  poetic,  and  vibrant        | 
with  regret;  'The  Shadow  Line'  is  calm  and,  though 
touched  with  sadness,  full  of  that  sort  of  hope  which  is 
courage. 

There  is  something  special  in  the  ring  of  it.     In  view  of 

13 


i 


178  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  fact  that  it  was  published  during  the  Great  War,  and 
in  view  of  the  dedication — to  his  son,  at  that  time  serving 
in  the  British  army,  and  to  all  young  men  who  must  now 
cross  the  Shadow  Line — one  cannot  escape  the  feeling 
that  Conrad  published  it,  if  he  did  not  actually  write  it, 
with  the  trust  that  it  was  timely.  At  any  rate,  the  deep- 
est and  best  of  him  are  in  it ;  and  through  the  simple  yet 
mysterious  narrative  there  shines  the  solace  of  a  strong 
spirit,  the  unshakable  conviction  that  though  in  passing 
through  the  worst  of  life  man  may  lose  for  ever  much  that 
was  even  dearer  than  he  knew,  his  strength  will  become 
more  augustly  beautiful  as  he  takes  upon  himself  the 
responsibility  of  faith  in  the  soUdarity  and  in  the  com- 
mon destiny  of  his  fellow  beings. 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  179 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

NOVELS 

1895  '  Almayer's  Folly.' 

;^    1896  'An  Outcast  of  the  Islands.' 

^     1898  '  The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus.' 

1900  'Lord  Jim.' 
'      1903  'Nostromo.' 

1907  'The  Secret  Agent.' 

',      1911  '  Under  Western  Eyes.' 

]       1914  'Chance.' 

1915  'Victory.' 

1917  'The  Shadow  Line:  A  Confession.' 

IN  COLLABORATION  WITH  FORD  MADOX  HUEFFER 

1901  'The  Inheritors:  An  Extravagant  Story.' 
'      1903    'Romance:  A  Novel.' 

TALES  AND  SHORT  STORIES 

1898     'Tales  of  Unrest.' 

1902  'Youth:  A  Narrative;  and  two  other  Stories.' 
J      1903     'Typhoon:  and  other  Stories.' 

1908  'A  Set  of  Six.' 

-^^      1912     '  'Twixt  Land  and  Sea.' 
^      1916     '  Within  the  Tides.' 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 

1906     'The  Mirror  of  the  Sea:  Memories  and  Impressions.' 
1912     'A  Personal  Record'  (Pubhshed  in  England  as  '  Some  Remis- 
"^  censes'). 

BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  CRITICAL 
Richard  Curie, '  Joseph  Conrad:  A  Study,'  1914. 


/ 


CHAPTER  X 

HERBERT  GEORGE  WELLS   (1868-        ) 

If,  as  many  think,  sociological  fiction  is  the  character- 
istic literary  product  of  the  time,  H.  G.  Wells  has  a  fair 
claim  to  be  considered  its  most  representative  writer, 
on  account  not  merely  of  the  extent  and  variety  of  his 
contacts  with  current  thought,  but  of  the  power  with 
which  he  has  brought  vague  popular  discontents  to 
clear  and  artistic  expression.  He  sprang  from  the 
lowest  scale  of  the  middle-class — ^barely  divided  in  his 
birth  and  upbringing  from  the  working  class  which  dur- 
ing his  youth  and  early  manhood  came  into  educational 
opportunity  and  political  power.  One  of  his  grand- 
fathers was  head  gardener  at  Penshurst,  the  other  an 
innkeeper  at  Midhurst,  his  father  a  professional  crick- 
eter and  small  shopkeeper  at  Bromley,  Kent.  His 
earliest  recollections  are  thus  recorded  in  '  First  and  Last 
Things':— 

"  I  recall  an  underground  kitchen  with  a  drawered  table,  a  window 
looking  up  at  a  grating,  a  back  yard  in  which,  growing  out  by  a 
dustbin,  was  a  grape-vine;  a  red-papered  room  with  a  bookcase, 
over  my  father's  shop,  the  dusty  aisles  and  fixtures,  the  regiments 
of  wine-glasses  and  tumblers,  the  rows  of  hanging  mugs  and  jugs, 
the  towering  edifices  of  jam-pots,  the  tea  and  dinner  and  toilet  sets 
in  that  emporium,  its  brighter  side  of  cricket  goods,  of  pads  and 
balls  and  stumps.  Out  of  the  window  one  peeped  at  the  more  ex- 
terior world,  the  High  Street  in  front,  the  tailor's  garden,  the  butcher's 
yard,  the  churchyard  and  Bromley  church  tower  behind;  and  one 
was  taken  upon  expeditions  to  fields  and  open  places.    This  limited 


^  / 


\v 


H.  G.  WELLS  181 

V 

world  was  peopled  with  certain  familiar  presences,  mother  and  father, 

two  brothers,  the  evasive  but  interesting  cat,  and  by  intermittent 

people  of  a  livelier   and  more  transient  interest,    customers  and 

y       callers."  > 

Upper-class  life  he  saw  (from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
servants'  hall)  when  on  his  father's  death  in  1878  his 
mother  became  housekeeper  in  the  family  in  which  she 
had  formerly  been  lady's  maid  at  Up  Park  near  Peters- 
field,  the  "Bladesover"  of  'Tono-Bungay/  which  also 
enshrines  some  early  experiences  in  the  chemist's  shop 
(drug-store)  at  Midhurst.  He  had  a  bitter  struggle,  both 
,  for  livelihood  and  for  education,  beginning  work  as  a 
draper's  assistant  (dry  goods  clerk)  at  the  age  of  15  and 
experiencing  in  his  own  person  some  of  the  humiliations 
he  has  described  in  'Kipps.'  Striving  to  educate  him- 
self, he  took  a  humblefpost  as  assistant-master  in  an 
obscure  school,  and  from  this  in  turn  he  escaped  with  the 
aid  of  a  Government  Scholarship  to  the  Royal  College 
of  Science,  South  Kensington.  It  was  his  good  fortune 
to  come  under  Huxley,  the  leading  exponent  of  the  new 
science  of  biology  and  one  of  the  most  stirring  spirits  in 
the  intellectual  unrest  of  the  time.  Economically  and 
socially  the  immediate  gain  for  Wells  was  the  London 
B.Sc.  degree  with  first  class  honours  in  zoology;  upon  his 
mental  development,  the  effects  were  far-reaching.  It 
is  really  of  himself  under  the  name  of(  Oswald  that  Wells 
speaks  in  'Joan  and  Peter':  V.  -, 

"Those  were  the  great  days  when  Huxley  lectured  on  zoology  at 
South  Kensington,  and  to  him  Oswald  went.  Oswald  did  indeed 
find  science  consoling  and  inspiring.  Scientific  studies  were  at  once 
rarer  and  more  touched  by  enthusiasm  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
than  they  are  now,  and  he  was  soon  a  passionate  naturalist,  consumed 
by  the  insatiable  craving  to  know  how.    That  little,  long  upper 


\l 


( 

\ 


182  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

laboratory  in  the  Normal  School  of  Science,  as  the  place  was  then 
called,  with  the  preparations  and  diagrams  along  one  side,  the  sinks 
and  windows  along  the  other,  the  row  of  small  tables  down  the  win- 
dows, and  the  ever-present  vague  mixed  smell  of  methylated  spirit, 
Canada  balsam,  and  a  sweetish  decay,  opened  vast  new  horizons  to 
him.  To  the  world  of  the  eighteen-eighties  the  story  of  Ufe,  of  the 
origin  and  branching  out  of  species,  of  the  making  of  continents,  was 
stiU  the  most  inspiring  of  new  romances.  Comparative  anatomy  in 
particular  was  then  a  great  and  philosophical  'new  learning,'  a 
mighty  training  of  the  mind;  the  drift  of  biological  teaching  towards 
speciaUzation  was  still  to  come." 

For  the  time  being,  however,  Wells  had  to  work  hard 
for  a  living  as  a  university  coach — so  hard  that  after 
three  years  his  health  broke  down.  He  had  already 
published  a  text-book  on  biology  and  had  written  for  the 
'University  Correspondent,'  the  'Educational  Review' 
and  the  'Fortnightly.'  He  now  abandoned  teaching  and 
adventured  boldly  on  joumaUsm  in  the  'Pall  Mall 
Gazette,'  'Saturday  Review'  and  'Nature.'  By  1895 
he  had  pubHshed  his  first  romance  and  his  first  volumes 
of  essays  and  of  short  stories,  and  was  fairly  launched 
on  a  literary  career. 

His  early  stories  were  a  curious  amalgam  of  scientific 
knowledge  and  riotous  romance  which  he  has  himself 
compared  to  the  "monstrous  experimental  imaginings" 
of  children.  The  verve  and  technical  skill  with  which 
they  were  written  won  for  them  a  wide  popularity,  but 
it  was  inevitable  that  Wells  should  soon  be  discontented 
with  the  themes  he  was  treating  and  the  public  to  which 
he  was  appealing.  Between  'The  Time  Machine'  (1895) 
and  *  When  the  Sleeper  Wakes'  (1899)  he  had  reduced  the 
scope  of  his  imaginative  flight  from  30  million  years  to  a 
mere  matter  of  a  century  ahead,  and  as  early  as  1896 


'  .« 


H.  G.  WELLS  183 

he  had  begun  to  turn  his  glance  from  the  far  future  to  the 
present.  'The  Wheels  of  Chance'  (1896),  recounting  the 
adventures,  amorcms  and  other,  of  a  draper's  assistant  on 
a  holiday,  is  slight,  but  it  is  a  well-told  story  of  contem- 
porary life.  'Love  and  Mr.  Lewisham'  (1900)  marks  a 
distinct  advance^  in  the  same  direction,  and  after  the 
interposition  of  two  romances  'The  First  Men  in  the  ^ 
Moon'  and  'The  Food  of  the  Gods'  (the  character  of 
which-  is  sufficiently  indicated  by  their  titles)  Wells  ^  , 
definitely  committed  himself  to  the  sociological  novel 
of  contemporary  life  in  'Kipps'  (1905).  The  misadven- 
tures and  successes  of  the  suddenly-enriched  draper's 
apprentice  are  told  with  a  humorous  kindliness  which 
is  in  itself  a  delight,  but  the  novelist  never  loses  sight  of 
the  social  significance  of  his  hero's  vain  endeavours  to 
accommodate  himself  to  the  conventional  requirements 
of  a  society  to  which  he  comes  too  late.  It  is  a  mere 
chance  that  he  comes  to  it  at  all;  but  if  by  another  chance 
he  had  come  to  it  earUer  he  would  have  found  his  way 
perfectly  smooth. 

'In  the  Days  of  the  Comet'  (1906)  is  a  partial  return 
to  Wells's  older  manner,  but  even  in  it  the  main  interest 
is  sociological,  and  the  romantic  science  is  merely  an  ill- 
fitting  patch  upon  the  presentation  of  the  serious  ques- 
tions which  were  then  occupying  the  writer's  mind. 
The  resulting  combination  is  unsuccessful  alike  as  a  ro- 
mance and  as  a  novel. 

In  'Tono-Bungay'  (1909)  the  scientific  element  is  less 
prominent  and  much  less  fantastic;  if  the  flight  of  the 
hero  in  an  aeroplane  across  the  Channel  was  at  the  time 
of  composition  not  very  probable,  it  was  only  a  step  or 
two  in  advance  of  actuaUty.    The  career  of  the  patent 


184  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

medicine  promoter,  in  spite  of  some  grotesque  elements, 
was  characteristic  of  the  time  (being,  indeed,  founded  on 
the  exploits  of  some  recent  commercial  adventurers)  and 
it  gave  Wells  the  opportunity  to  reveal  both  the  powers 
and  limitations  of  his  genius  as  a  noveUst.  The  story  is 
told  with  sustained  sweep  and  vitality;  the  three  main 
characters  are  originally  conceived  and  finely  drawn. 
The  minor  characters  are  less  successful,  especially 
Beatrice,  who  never  has  the  touch  of  Ufe,  least  of  all  in 
the  love  scenes.  This  appears  to  be  due,  not  so  much  to 
lack  of  social  experience  on  the  part  of  the  novelist,  as  to 
temperamental  defect.  The  Uttle  stenographer  with 
whom  the  hero  comes  so  quickly"^  to  an  understanding 
is  real  enough,  but  this  affair  can  hardly  be  called  ro- 
mantic. It  is  when  Wells  tries  to  convey  passion  purified 
by  its  own  fire  that  he  fails  most  dismally.  The  lower 
forms  of  sex  attraction  he  represents  faithfully  and  sym- 
pathetically ;  for  the  portrayal  of  real  passion  in  its  higher, 
intenser  moods  he  has  no  gift. 

This  is  often  exemplified  in  the  novels,  in  none  more 
clearly  than  in  'Ann  Veronica,'  which  is  a  study  of  sex 
and  of  the  efforts  of  an  intelligent  girl  to  free  herself 
from  the  trammels  of  conventional  surroundings.  The 
novelist's  picture  of  Ann's  struggles  to  gain  economic  in- 
dependence is  not  any  more  encouraging  than  Brieux's 
treatment  of  a  somewhat  similiar  situation  in  *La 
Femme  Seule.*  In  both,  man  is  represented  as  a  pred- 
atory animal  controlling  economic  opportunity  and 
exercising  that  control  to  satisfy  his  sensual  desires. 
The  War  has  changed  the  economic  situation  for  the 
better  in  both  England  and  France,  and  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  at  any  time  in  the  United  States  a 


H.  G.  WELLS  185 

capable  woman  eager  to  earn  her  own  living  would  have 
found  the  path  of  virtue  so  difficult  as  Ann  did.  The 
solution  in  her  particular  case,  under  an  appearance  of 
unconventionality,  is  thoroughly  in  accord  with  con- 
ventional opinion.  Only  the  existence  of  a  discarded  wife 
prevents  Capes  from  marrying  Ann  in  the  first  instance, 
and  as  soon  as  he  is  free,  he  does  marry  her.  They  settle 
down  to  the  conventional  fehcity  of  the  hearth  and  the 
cradle,  and  Ann's  conventional  relatives  recognize  that 
her  rebellion  is  condoned  by  her  ultimate  submission. 
There  is  no  sympathy  wasted  by  the  author  on  the  more 
extreme  emancipators  of  her  sex  with  whom  Ann  comes  in 
contact  during  her  struggle  for  freedom;  they  are  frankly 
ridiculed.  Take  for  instance  this  scrap  of  Miss  Minifer's 
conversation : — 

"'We  do  not  want  the  men,  we  do  not  want  them,  with  their 
sneers  and  loud  laughter.  Empty,  silly  coarse  brutes.  Brutes! 
They  are  the  brute  stiU  with  us!  Science  some  day  may  teach  us  a 
way  to  do  without  them.  It  is  only  the  women  matter.  It  is  not 
every  sort  of  creature  needs — these  males.  Some  have  no  males. ' 
'"There's  green-fly'  admitted  Ann  Veronica.  'And  even  then — ' 
"The  conversation  hung  for  a  thoughtful  moment.  Ann  Veronica 
readjusted  her  chin  on  her  hand.  'I  wonder  which  of  us  is  right?' 
she  said.     '  I  haven't  a  scrap — of  this  sort  of  aversion. ' " 

'  The  History  of  Mr.  Polly '  recounts  with  humour  an 
sympathy  the  misadventures  of  a  small  tradesman, 
cursed  with  indigestion,  an  unsuccessful  business,  and  a 
shrewish  wife,  but  blessed  with  a  mild  romantic  imagina- 
tiveness which  lends  his  character  a  certain  charm. 
A  much  more  ambitious  effort  from  the  sociological  point 
of  view  is  'The  New  Machiavelli,'  which  opens  with  a 
searching  analysis  of  social  conditions  in  the  later  Vic- 
torian period,  and  proceeds  to  present,  not  without  per- 


186  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

sonal  feeling,  the  clash  between  public  ambition  and 
irregular  passion.     There  are  amusing,  if  somewhat  mali- 
cious, portraits  of  contemporary  personahties,  and  some 
acute  reflections  on  contemporary  pohtical  tendencies, 
but  the  development  of  the  novel,  as  not  infrequently 
happens  with  Wells,  fails  to  bear  out  the  promise  of  its 
beginning,  partly  because  of  the  author's  inabiUty,  al- 
ready noted,  to  convey  adequately  the  overmastering 
passion  which  is  the  centre  of  the  story. 
I         'Marriage'  deals  again  with  a  particular  phase  of  the 
,f     sex-question — ^the  conflict  between  sexual  attraction  and 
"!      devotion  to  science.     The  young  scientist  and  his  some- 
i      what  conventional  bride  are  amusingly  and  not  unsym- 
pathetically  drawn  in  their  earlier  difficulties  of  court- 
ship and  housekeeping,  but  when  they  get  out  into  the 
wilds  of  Labrador  to  discuss  sex  relations  in  the  abstract, 
they  cease  to  be  either  natural  or  entertaining,  and  their 
disquisitions  on  matiimony  cannot  be  said  to  add  any- 
thing new  to  a  subject  already  well-worn. 

'The  Passionate  Friends'  is  still  another  treatment  of 
the  same  ttierne;  in  this  case,  romance  is  kept  alive  by 
enforced  separation,  but  the  resulting  love  letters  have 
neither  the  accent  of  passion  nor  the  stimulus  of  intel- 
lectual inspiration.  The  didactic  element  is  again  over- 
emphasized in  'The  World  Set  Free,'  'The  Wife  of  Sir 
Isaac  Harman,'  an3  'The  Research  Magnificent,'  and  in 
none  of  these  did  the  theme  sufficiently  stir  the  author's 
imagination  to  enable  him  to  write  more  than  a  readable 
story,  with  occasional  lapses  into  philosophical  dullness. 

'Bealby'  is  a  mere  extravaganza,  and  the  half-ac- 
knowledged 'Mr.  Boon'  is  simply  a  fling  at  some  con- 
temporaries Wells  disliked  but  apparently  did  not  care  to 


H.  G.  WELLS  187 

attack  openly.  The  Great  War,  however,  really  fired 
the  novelist's  imagination,  and  'Mr.  Britling  Sees  it 
Through'  is  by  far  the  best  of  contemporary  accounts  of 
the  social  and  intellectual  conditions  of  the  English 
middle-class  immediately  before  and  immediately  after 
the  opening  of  the  new  epoch.  Britling,  apart  from  being 
endowed  with  unnecessarily  numerous  amours  before  the 
story  opens,  is  treated  with  that  humorous  sympathy 
which  is  one  of  the  author's  best  gifts,  and  his  searchings  of 
heart  are  vitahzed  by  the  sudden  change  affecting  his  Ufe, 
as  it  did  millions  of  others  at  the  same  time.  The  wide- 
spread popularity  of  the  story  was  not  undeserved,  for  its 
sincerity  of  utterance  gave  it  a  universal  appeal,  and  it 
will  remain  an  invaluable  and  moving  record  of  a  mind 
sensitive  to  spiritual  change  in  a  great  crisis  of  the 
world's  history. 

It  was  a  pity  that  Wells  did  not  leave  this  incursion 
into  the  spiritual  field  to  stand  by  itself.  '  The  Soul  of  a 
Bishop,'  with  its  superfluous  potion,  was  asTinhappy  a 
venture  into  the  domain  of  rehgion  as  '  God  the  Invisible 
King,'  published  about  the  same  time,  which  had  not 
even  the  novehst's  narrative  power  to  relieve  its  ineffect- 
iveness. All  that  Wells  did  as  a  theologian  was  to  present 
ancient  heresies  with  the  surprised  air  of  a  modern  con- 
jurer. 

Wells  has  made  large  claims  for  the  modem  novel  and 
he  has  done  his  best  to  occupy  the  wide  territory  he 
sketched  out  as  its  proper  field.     He  writes : — 

"It  is  to  be  the  social  mediator,  the  vehicle  of  understanding,  the 
instrument  of  seK-examination,  the  parade  of  morals  and  the  ex- 
change of  manners,  the  factory  of  customs,  the  criticism  of  laws  and 
institutions  and  of  social  dogmas  and  ideas.  It  is  to  be  the  home 
confessional,  the  initiator  of  knowledge,  the  seed  of  fruitful  self- 


188  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

questioning.  Let  me  be  very  clear  here,  I  do  not  mean  for  a  moment 
that  the  novelist  is  going  to  set  up  as  a  teacher,  as  a  sort  of  priest 
with  a  pen,  who  will  make  men  and  women  believe  and  do  this  and 
that.  The  novel  is  not  a  new  sort  of  pulpit;  humanity  is  passing 
out  of  the  phase  when  men  sit  under  preachers  and  dogmatize  in- 
fluences. But  the  novelist  is  going  to  be  the  most  potent  of  artists, 
because  he  is  going  to  present  conduct,  devise  beautiful  conduct, 
discuss  conduct,  analyse  conduct,  suggest  conduct,  illuminate  it 
through  and  through.  He  will  not  teach,  but  discuss,  point  out, 
plead  and  display.  And  this  being  my  view,  you  will  be  prepared 
for  the  demand  I  am  now  about  to  make  for  an  absolutely  free  hand 
for  the  novelist  in  his  choice  of  topic  and  incident  and  in  his  method 
of  treatment;  or  rather,  if  I  may  presimtie  to  speak  for  other  novel- 
ists, I  would  say  it  is  not  so  much  a  demand  we  make  as  an  intention 
we  proclaim.  We  are  going  to  wTite,  subject  only  to  our  own  limita- 
tions, about  the  whole  of  human  life.  We  are  going  to  deal  with 
poUtical  questions  and  religious  questions  and  social  questions.  We 
cannot  present  people  unless  we  have  this  free  hand,  this  unrestricted 
field.  What  is  the  good  of  telling  stories  about  people's  lives  if  one 
may  not  deal  freely  with  the  religious  beliefs  and  organizations  that 
have  controlled  or  failed  to  control  them?  What  is  the  good  of 
pretending  to  write  about  love  and  the  loyalties  and  treacheries  and 
quarrels  of  men  and  women,  if  one  must  not  glance  at  those  varieties 
of  physical  temperament  and  organic  quality,  those  deeply  passion- 
ate needs  and  distresses  from  which  half  the  storms  of  human  life 
are  brewed?  We  mean  to  deal  with  all  these  things,  and  it  will 
need  verymuch  more  than  influential  people  in  London,  the  scurrility 
of  the  'Spectator,'  and  the  deep  and  obstinate  silences  of  the  'West- 
minster Gazette,'  to  stop  the  incoming  tide  of  aggressive  novel- 
writing.  We  are  going  to  write  about  it  all.  We  are  going  to  write 
about  business  and  finance  and  politics  and  precedence  and  preten- 
tiousness and  decorum  and  indecorum,  imtil  a  thousand  pretences 
and  ten  thousand  impostures  shrivel  in  the  cold,  clear  air  of  our 
elucidations.  We  are  going  to  write  of  wasted  opportimities  and 
latent  beauties  until  a  thousand  new  ways  of  living  open  to  men  and 
women.  We  are  going  to  appeal  to  the  young  and  the  hopeful  and 
the  curious,  against  the  established,  the  dignified,  and  defensive. 
Before  we  have  done,  we  will  have  all  life  within  the  scope  of  the 
noveL" 


H.  G.  WELLS  189 

It  is  not  surprising  tliat  his  essays  have  been  over- 
shadowed by  his  novels,  where  his  gift  for  vivid  narrative 
and  his  imaginative  sympathy  found  freer  play,  but  these 
more  direct  and  unadorned  expressions  of  his  political 
and  social  views  are  by  no  means  to  be  neglected,  and 
have  rather  gained  in  richness  and  power  as  the  years 
passed  while  his  novels  have  lost  by  being  overburdened 
by  unassimilated  reasoning.  In  the  earlier  essays,  too, 
there  is  still  a  considerable  element  of  romantic  prophecy 
which  ministers  rather  to  amusement  than  to  serious 
thought;  but  the  most  recent  series  'First  and  Last 
Things'  and  'Social  Forces  in  England  and  America' 
grapple  with  some  of  the  most  urgent  problems  of  the 
day.  He  has  an  equal  disHke  for  the  planless  individual- 
ism (as  he  sees  it)  of  the  United  States,  and  for  the 
"bureaucratic  servile  state"  towards  which,  before  the 
War,  both  Great  Britain  and  Germany  seemed  to  him  to 
be  tending.  His  ideal  hes  somewhere  between  these  two 
— perhaps  nearer  the  latter  than  the  former — in  what 
he  describes  as  "the  Great  State": — 

"A  glance  at  the  countryside  conjures  up  a  picture  of  extensive 
tracts  being  cultivated  on  a  wholesale  scale,  of  skilled  men  directing 
great  ploughing,  sowing  and  reaping  plants,  steering  cattle  and  sheep 
about  carefully  designed  enclosures,  constructing  channels  and 
guiding  sewage  towards  its  proper  destination  on  the  fields,  and  then 
of  added  crowds  of  genial  people  coming  out  to  spray  trees  and 
plants,  pick  and  sort  and  pack  fruits. 

"The  amount  of  regular  labour,  skilled  and  unskilled,  required  to 
produce  everything  necessary  for  everyone  living  in  its  highly  elab- 
orate civilization  may,  xmder  modem  conditions,  with  the  help  of 
scientific  economy  and  power-producing  machinery,  be  reduced  to  so 
small  a  number  of  working  hours  per  head  in  proportion  to  the  aver- 
age life  of  the  citizen,  as  to  be  met  as  regards  the  greater  moiety  of  it 
by  the  payment  of  wages  over  and  above  the  gratuitous  share  of 


190  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

each  individual  in  the  general  output;  and  as  regards  the  residue,  a 
residue  of  rough,  disagreeable  and  monotonous  operations,  by  some 
form  of  conscription,  which  will  demand  a  year  or  so,  let  us  say,  of 
each  person's  life,  for  the  public  service.  If  we  reflect  that,  in  the 
contemporary  state,  there  is  already  food,  shelter  and  clothing  of  a 
sort  for  everyone,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  enormous  nvimbers  of 
people  do  no  productive  work  at  all  because  they  are  too  well  off, 
that  great  niunbers  are  out  of  work,  great  nimabers  by  bad  nutrition 
and  training  incapable  of  work,  and  that  an  enormous  amount  of  the 
work  actually  done  is  the  overlapping  production  of  competitive 
trade  and  work  upon  such  politically  necessary  but  socially  useless 
things  as  Dreadnaughts,  it  becomes  clear  that  the  absolutely  un- 
avoidable labour  in  a  modern  community  and  its  ratio  to  the  avail- 
able vitality  must  be  of  very  small  accoimt  indeed. 

"It  is  possible  to  have  this  Great  State,  essentially  socialistic, 
owning  and  running  the  land  and  all  the  great  public  services,  sus- 
taining everybody  in  absolute  freedom  at  a  certain  minimimi  of  com- 
fort and  well-being,  and  still  leaving  most  of  the  interests,  amuse- 
ments and  adornments  of  the  individual  life,  and  all  sorts  of  collective 
concerns,  social  and  political  discussion,  religious  worship,  philosophy, 
and  the  like  to  the  free  personal  initiatives  of  entirely  unofficial 
people." 

On  the  subject  of  marriage,  which  he  has  discussed  so 
often  in  his  novels,  he  is  as  firmly  opposed  to  the  doc- 
trinaire radicaUsm  of  Shaw  as  he  is  to  the  romantic  ideal- 
ism of  the  rigid  and  eternal  bond : — 

"In  that  world  of  Mr.  Shaw's  dreams,  in  which  everybody  is  to 
have  an  equal  income  and  nobody  is  to  have  children,  in  that  cul- 
minating conversazione  of  humanity,  his  marriage  law  will,  no  doubt 
work  with  the  most  admirable  results.  But  if  we  make  a  step  to- 
wards reality  and  consider  a  world  in  which  incomes  are  unequal, 
and  economic  difficulties  abound — for  the  present  we  will  ignore  the 
complication  of  offspring — we  at  once  find  it  necessary  to  modify 
the  first  fine  simplicity  of  divorce  at  either  partner's  request.  Mar- 
riage is  almost  always  a  serious  economic  disturbance  for  both  man 
and  woman;  work  has  to  he  given  up  and  rearranged,  resources  have 
to  be  pooled;  only  in  the  rarest  cases  does  it  escape  becoming  an  in- 
definite business  partnership. 


H.  G.  WELLS  191 

"  Marriage  to  me  is  no  mystical  and  eternal  union,  but  a  practical 
affair,  to  be  judged  as  all  practical  things  are  judged — by  its  returns 
in  happiness  and  human  weKare.  And  directly  we  pass  from  the 
mists  and  glamom^  of  amorous  passion  to  the  warm  reaUties  of  the 
nursery,  we  pass  into  a  new  system  of  considerations  altogether. 
We  are  no  longer  considering  A.  in  relation  to  Mrs.  A.,  but  A.  and 
Mrs.  A.  in  relation  to  an  indefinite  number  of  little  A.'s,  who  are  the 
very  life  of  the  State  in  which  they  live.  Into  the  Case  of  Mr.  A. 
and  Mrs.  A.  come  Master  A.  and  Miss  A.  intervening.  They  have 
the  strongest  claim  against  both  their  parents  for  love,  shelter  and 
upbringing,  and  the  legislator  and  statesman,  concerned  as  he  is 
chiefly  with  the  future  of  the  community,  has  the  strongest  reasons 
for  seeing  that  they  get  these  things,  even  at  the  price  of  considerable 
vexation,  boredom  or  indignity  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  A.  And  here  it  is 
that  there  arises  the  rational  case  against  free  and  frequent  divorce  and 
the  general  unsettlement  and  fluctuation  of  homes  that  would  ensue. 

"Divorce  as  it  exists  at  present  is  not  a  readjustment  but  a  re- 
venge. It  is  the  nasty  exposure  of  a  private  wrong.  In  England, 
a  husband  may  divorce  his  wife  for  a  single  act  of  infidelity,  and 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  we  are  on  the  eve  of  an  equalization 
of  the  law  in  this  respect.  I  will  confess  I  consider  this  an  extreme 
concession  to  the  passion  of  jealousy,  and  one  likely  to  tear  off  the 
roof  from  many  a  family  of  innocent  children.  ...  Of  course, 
if  OUT  divorce  law  exists  mainly  for  the  gratification  of  the  fiercer 
sexual  resentments,  well  and  good,  but  if  that  is  so,  let  us  abandon 
our  pretence  that  marriage  is  an  institution  for  the  establishment 
and  protection  of  homes.  And  while  on  the  one  hand  existing  di- 
vorce laws  appear  to  be  obsessed  by  sexual  offences,  other  things  of 
far  more  evil  effect  upon  the  home  go  without  a  remedy.  There  are, 
for  example,  desertion,  domestic  neglect,  cruelty  to  the  children, 
dnmkenness  or  harmful  drug-taking,  indecency  of  living  and  uncon- 
trollable extravagance." 

'Joan  and  Peter,  The  Story  of  an  Education'  (1918) 
belongs  in  this  section  of  Wells's  works  rather  than  among 
his  novels,  for  it  has  barely  enough  thread  of  story  to 
hold  it  together  and  the  characterization  is  shght.  Joan 
and  Peter  are  any  two  young  people  growing  up  to  woman- 


y 


192  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

hood  and  manhood,  and  Oswald  is  any  guardian  (as  it 
might  be  Wells  himself)  with  an  inquiring  mind  and  a 
sense  of  responsibility  for  the  future  of  the  Empire  and 
of  the  world.  The  dons  and  schoolmasters  Oswald 
interviews  are  types  in  the  sense  that  they  have  no  indi- 
viduality— one  hopes  that  they  are  not  typical — and 
they  say  the  kind  of  thing  Wells  wants  them  to  say  to 
bring  out  the  points  of  his  argument,  not  the  kind  of 
thing  human  beings  would  say — for  schoolmasters  are 
still  human — if  confronted  by  such  a  persistent  questioner 
of  all  established  principles  as  Wells  is  and  Oswald  is 
set  out  to  be.  A  paper  by  Wells  in  the  'Fortnightly 
Review'  of  the  previous  year  (April,  1917),  'The  Case 
against  the  Classical  Languages,'  gives  his  view  more 
clearly  and  concisely  without  the  impression  that  he  is 
setting  up  men  of  straw  for  the  pleasure  of  bowling  them 
over.     He  says: — 

"I  want  ...  to  see  my  country  and  my  English-speaking 
race  thinking  more  massively  than  it  does  at  present,  thinking  more 
strongly  and  clearly.  I  want  to  see  the  hundred  and  fifty  millions 
of  English-speakers  as  one  great  unifying  mind  finding  itself  in  ex- 
pression. I  do  not  want  to  see  what  should  be  the  best  thing  in  our 
university  life,  the  philosophical  teaching  in  the  universities,  the 
teaching  that  attracts  the  best  intelligences  of  the  country,  perpet- 
ually cut  off  from  the  market-place  because  it  is  reading  Greek, 
thinking  partly  in  Greek  and  partly  in  English,  with  a  partition 
between,  and  writing  its  thoughts  sloppily  and  confusedly  in  an 
Anglo-Greek  jargon.  .  .  .  These  Greek  monopolists  have  to  get 
their  trade  and  their  prejudices  and  privileges  out  of  the  way  of  our 
sons  and  our  people  and  our  pubUc  services.  It  is  their  share  in  the 
sacrifices  of  these  creative  days." 

In  the  United  States  the  Greek  monopolists  have  got 
out  of  the  way — or  rather  they  have  been  pushed  into  a 
corner — and  still  the  educational  problem  is  not  solved. 


H.  G.  WELLS  193 

For  the  rest,  besides  English  and  philosophy,  Wells 
wants  to  have  biology,  physiology,  'hygiene,  sociology, 
and  history  taught — all  of  which  has  been  done  already  in 
many  American  schools.  The  advanced  educationalist 
in  the  United  States  of  to-day  would  find  Wells's  educa- 
tional programme  quite  conservative.  In  one  point, 
however,  he  is  radical  enough;  he  wants  a  new  race 
of  teachers.  Those  encountered  by  Joan  and  Peter 
"seemed  to  be  for  the  most  part  little-spirited,  gossiping 
men.  They  had  also  an  effect  of  being  underpaid;  they 
had  been  caught  early  by  the  machinery  of  prize  and 
scholarship,  bred,  as  they  say  at  the  Zoological  Gardens, 
'in  the  menagerie';  they  were  men  who  knew  nothing  of 
the  world  outside,  nothing  of  effort  and  adventure,  noth- 
ing of  sin  and  repentance."  One  wonders  how  the 
teachers  Wells  has  in  mind  would  find  time  to  acquire 
knowledge,  seeing  that  personal  experience  of  "those 
graver  and  larger  sins  that  really  distress  and  mar  man- 
kind" makes  heavy  demands  on  health  and  energy. 
Hardly  in  this  way  could  the  problem  be  solved  of  "mak- 
ing the  teacher  of  youth  an  inspiring  figure,"  and  under 
the  present  system  it  has  not  been  found  so  insoluble  as 
Wells  seems  to  think. 

Wells  is  too  much  of  an  artist  not  to  relieve  his  dis- 
sertation by  many  lively  and  amusing  passages  of  de- 
scription and  narration,  and  when  in  the  course  of  some 
500  pages  he  has  got  his  young  people  educated — as  well 
as  he  could,  though  not  at  all  to  his  own  satisfaction — 
just  in  time  for  the  outbreak  of  the  War,  he  turns  to  an 
account  of  the  state  of  English  society  in  1914  almost 
as  good  as  the  sketch  of  later  Victorian  England  at  the 
beginning  of  'The  New  Machiavelli' — not  quite  so  good, 

14 


194  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

for  the  author's  personal  feeling  comes  more  into  play 
and  distorts  the  picture.  But  the  restless  excitement  of 
the  years  before  the  War  is  vividly  portrayed  in  its 
various  manifestations;  feminism,  trades  unionism,  so- 
cialism, the  Irish  question  are  presented  concretely,  and 
there  follows  a  graphic  review  of  the  various  phases 
of  public  feeling  and  opinion  as  the  great  struggle  pro- 
ceeds. Intermixed  with  this  there  is  inevitable  philoso- 
phizing, and  some  theology — more  modest  in  tone  than 
Wells's  first  incursion  into  this  field.  Peter  arrives  at 
"a  new  conception,  the  conception  of  Man  taking  hold 
of  the  world,  unassisted  by  God  but  with  the  acquies- 
cence of  God,  and  in  fulfilment  of  some  remote,  incom- 
prehensible planning  on  the  part  of  God."  At  this 
point,  however,  Wells  adds  the  saving  clause: — "Prob- 
ably Peter  in  thinking  this  was  following  one  of  the  most 
ancient  and  well-beaten  of  speculative  paths,  but  it 
seemed  to  him  that  it  was  a  new  way  of  thinking,"  The 
book  ends  with  Oswald's  'Valediction,'  a  discourse  on 
things  in  general  with  education  as  its  kernel,  given  to  us 
in  two  versions,  first  as  Oswald  devised  it  in  bed,  and  then 
as  he  actually  dehvered  it  with  the  interruptions  of  Peter, 
which  are  so  considerable  that  it  takes  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent shape — the  mind  of  Wells  in  its  last  phase,  Os- 
wald's midnight  reverie  representing  the  one  before  the 
last.  Friendship  with  America,  the  League  of  Nations, 
yes,  but  for  what?  Not  merely  for  peace,  not  for  democ- 
racy, but  for  progress,  "for  the  adventure  of  mankind." 
And  this  brings  us  back  to  education — "the  State  ex- 
plaining itself  to  and  incorporating  the  will  of  the  indi- 
vidual" so  as  to  fulfil  the  will  of  God. 

Careful  consideration  of  Wells's  work  as  a  whole  justi- 


H.  G.  WELLS  195 

fies  the  central  position  in  current  literature  ascribed  to 
him  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter.  He  widened  the 
scope  of  the  novel,  and  reflected  powerfully  many  char- 
acteristic tendencies  of  the  thought  of  his  time.  His 
direct  contributions  to  that  thought  are  stimulating  and 
suggestive.  He  is  something  more  than  a  good  story- 
teller; and  when  the  historian  in  a  future  age  wishes 
to  discover  what  were  the  material  and  spiritual  dis- 
contents, the  misgivings  and  aspirations  of  the  more  rest- 
less thinkers  in  England  during  the  quarter  of  a  century 
immediately  before  the  War,  he  will  find  them  more  ade- 
quately and  vividly  portrayed  in  the  novels  of  Wells 
than  in  the  work  of  any  other  writer. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

ROMANCES 

y  1895  '  The  Time  Machine.' 

^  1896  'The  Island  of  Dr.  Moreau.' 

1897  'The  Invisible  Man.' 

1898  ' The  War  of  the  Worlds.' 

1 899  '  When  the  Sleeper  Wakes.' 
1901  'The  First  Men  in  the  Moon.' 

^    1904    'The  Food  of  the  Gods.' 

1 906     'In  the  Days  of  the  Comet.' 
^    1908     'The  War  in  the  Air.' 

SOCIOLOGICAL  ESSAYS 

1901     'Anticipations  of  the  Reaction  of  Mechanical  and  Scientific 

Progress  upon  Human  Life  and  Thought.' 
1 903     '  Mankind  in  the  Making.' 

1905  'A  Modem  Utopia.' 

1906  'The  Future  in  America.' 
''      1907    'This  Misery  of  Boots.' 

1 908  '  New  Worlds  for  Old.' 

J^  'First  and  Last  Things.'     (Revised  and  enlarged  in  1917.) 

1914  'Social   Forces  in   England  and  America.'     (Published  in 
y/"  England  as  'An  Englishman  looks  at  the  World.') 

y  1916  'What  is  Coming?' 

1917  'God  the  Invisible  King.' 

NOVELS 


^1896  '  The  Wheels  of  Chance. ' 

y*^   1900  'Loveand  Mr.  Lewisham.' 

^  1905  'Kipps.' 

•^      1909  'Tono-Bungay.' 

-^  'Ann  Veronica.' 

"^  196 


H.  G.  WELLS  197 


1910 

'The  History  of  Mr.  Polly.' 

1911 

'The  New  Machiavelli.' 

1912 

'  Marriage.' 

X     1913 

'The  Passionate  Friends.' 

.'   ,  1914 

'The  World  Set  Free.' 

y' 

'The  Wife  of  Sir  Isaac  Harman.' 

1915 

'Bealby.' 

'The  Research  Magnificent.' 

1916 

'Mr.  Britling  Sees  it  Through.' 

1917 

'The  Soul  of  a  Bishop.' 

1918 

'Joan  and  Peter.' 

BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  CRITICAL 

Alexander  H.  Crawfurd,  'The  Religion  of  H.  G.  Wells,'  1909. 

J.  D.  Beresford,  'H.  G.  Wells,  A  Biography  and  a  Critical  Estimate 

of  his  Work,'  1915. 
Van  Wyck  Brooks,  'The  World  of  H.  G.  Wells,'  1915. 
Edwin  E.  Slosson,  'Six  Major  Prophets,'  1917. 

(Shaw  is  the  first  author  discussed.  Wells  the  second.    There  are 
good  bibliographies.) 

There  is  an  interesting  sketch  of  Wells's  early  career  by  Thomas 
Seccombe  in  the  London  '  Bookman,'  vol.  46,  pp.  13-24  (April,  1914). 


^ 


\\ 


CHAPTER  XI 
JOHN  GALSWORTHY   (1867-        ) 

Galsworthy  has  not  Wells's  narrative  power  or  in- 
fectious enthusiasm  for  ideas  or  first-hand  knowledge  of 
the  lowest  middle  class.  The  qualities  which  give  him  a 
permanent  place  in  the  literature  of  the  period  are  a  very 
real  sympathy  for  the  lowest  working  class — the  op- 
pressed and  outcast — and  skill  in  analysis  of  character 
and  emotion,  especially  of  amorous  passion  in  people  of 
intelligence  and  refinement. 

The  son  of  a  leading  London  lawyer,  bom  in  Surrey 
and  educated  at  Harrow  and  Oxford,  a  briefless  barrister 
who  completed  his  education  by  extensive  travel,  Gals- 
worthy at  early  manhood  had  acquired  an  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  habits  and  prejudices  of  the  EngUsh 
upper  middle  class  and  a  superficial  acquaintance  with 
various  foreign  types  met  in  the  course  of  his  globe- 
trotting. It  was  unfortunately  with  the  latter  that  he 
chose  to  deal  in  his  first  published  work,  which  shows  a 
curious  immaturity  and  uncertainty.  'From  the  Four 
Winds,'  printed  when  he  was  thirty,  is  a  collection  of 
sensational  foreign  adventures  which  give  no  promise 
of  the  power  of  analysis  and  criticism  he  developed  later. 
'Jocelyn'  and  'Villa  Rubein,'  which  followed,  conduct 
love-stories  of  no  special  interest  to  happy  endings;  in 
each  case  the  attempt  is  made  to  depict  and  analyse 
overmastering  passion,  but  without  success,  for  the 
characters    have    little    grip    on    reaUty.     The    foreign 

198 


JOHN   GALSWORTHY  199 

settings  and  the  foreign  English  used  in  the  dialogue — 
the  Americans  talk  a  selection  of  slang  apparently  culled 
from  every  State  in  the  Union — add  to  the  impression  of 
artificiality.  In  'The  Island  Pharisees'  the  women  are 
still  shadowy,  but  the  two  men — the  hero  Shelton  and 
the  French  vagabond,  Louis  Ferrand — are  firmly  drawn. 
It  is  a  pardonable  impertinence  to  identify  Shelton — 
well-born,  educated  at  Eton  and  Oxford,  travelled  and 
detached  from  the  cultivated  society  to  which  he  be- 
longs— with  the  author,  whose  point  of  view  he  obviously 
presents.  He  and  Ferrand — ^both  greatly  enriched  and 
developed — were  later  taken  over  into  'The  Pigeon' — 
Shelton  as  Wellwyn  and  Ferrand  under  his  own  name. 
In  the  novel  they  produce  a  continuous  stream  of  social 
criticism — almost  the  only  part  of  the  book  of  any  real 
value — but  it  lacks  the  balance,  subtlety  and  sympathy 
of  Galsworthy's  later  work. 

It  was  in  'The  Man  of  Property,'  published  when 
Galsworthy  was  nearly  forty,  that  the  novehst  first  showed 
complete  mastery  of  his  material  and  of  his  art.  Soames 
Forsyte,  though  he  is  not  an  agreeable  character,  is 
represented  not  as  a  criminal  (as  are  some  of  his  typical 
predecessors),  but  as  a  victim  of  his  own  nature,  his 
education  and  his  environment.  (  He  is  the  embodiment 
of  middle  class  prejudices,  Hmitations  and  virtues;  he 
regards  everything — ^including  his  wife — ^from  the  point 
of  view  of  possession;  he  has  no  sense  of  beauty,  no  real 
affection.'  With  individual  differences  which  are  very 
subtly  indicated,  the  whole  Forsyte  family  has  the  same 
point  of  view.  The  women,  though  still  not  very  pro- 
foundly realized,  are  more  lifehke  than  the  passionate 
heroines  Galsworthy  had  hitherto  attempted;  and  the 


200  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

men  are  admirably  differentiated  from  each  other;  old 
Jolyon  Forsyte,  whose  business  capacity  does  not  pre- 
vent him  from  remaining  thoroughly  human — he  uses 
his  money  to  indulge  the  domestic  affections  by  which 
he  really  lives — ^is  a  masterpiece.  The  young  architect 
who  stands  for  love  and  beauty  but  has  no  financial  sense, 
is  beaten  by  the  power  of  money  as  the  woman  he  loves 
is  undone  by  the  lack  of  it,  and  the  novel  ends  with  "the 
man  of  property"  in  absolute  control  of  the  situation. 
The  spirit  of  the  story  is  one  of  bitter  irony,  and  young 
Jolyon,  who  has  rebelled  against  his  class  but  is  still  part 
of  it,  sets  forth  openly  and  directly  on  behalf  of  the 
author  the  view  which  the  whole  story  is  intended  to  illus- 
trate:— 

""  "The  Forsytes  are  the  middle-men,  the  commercials,  the  pillars 
of  society,  the  cornerstones  of  convention,  everything  that  is  ad- 
mirable!! The  great  majority  of  architects,  painters,  or  writers 
have  no  principles,  like  any  other  Forsytes.  Art,  literature,  religion, 
survive  by  virtue  of  the  few  cranks  who  already  believe  in  such 
things,  and  the  many  Forsytes  who  make  a  commercial  use  of 
them.  .  .  .  They  are  magnificently  represented  in  religion; 
in  the  House  of  Commons  perhaps  more  nimaerous  than  anywhere; 
the  aristocracy  speaks  for  itself.  ...  My  people  are  not  very 
extreme,  and  they  have  their  own  private  pecuUarities,  hke  every 
other  family,  but  they  possess  in  a  remarkable  degree  those  two 
qualities  which  are  the  real  tests  of  a  Forsyte — the  power  of  never 
being  able  to  give  yourself  up  to  anything  soul  and  body,  and  the 
'sense  of  property.'" 

The  book  is  finely  written,  and  so  is  'The  Country 
House,'  especially  in  its  descriptions  of  the  quiet  English 
scenery.  The  social  satire  is  directed  against  the  char- 
acteristic hmitations  of  country  house  Ufe.  "They're 
crass,"  says  Mr.  Paramor,  who  defines  'Pendycitis'  as 
young  Jolyon  in  the  previous  novel  made  "the  diagnosis 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  201 

of  a  Forsyte":  "they  do  things  but  they  do  them  the 
wrong  way!  They  muddle  through  with  the  greatest 
possible  amount  of  unnecessary  labour  and  suffering. 
It's  part  of  the  hereditary  principle."  This  "crass- 
ness,"  the  author  says  in  another  passage,  "common  to 
all  men  in  this  strange  world,  and  in  the  Squire  intensi- 
fied, was  rather  a  process  than  a  quahty — obedience  to 
an  instinctive  dread  of  what  was  foreign  to  himself,  an 
instinctive  fear  of  seeing  another's  point  of  view,  an  in- 
stinctive beUef  in  precedent."  This  crass  unintelUgent 
traditionalism,  adhered  to  with  invincible  obstinacy, 
embroils  old  Pendyce — a  much  less  sympathetic  figure 
than  his  parallel,  old  Jolyon  Forsyte — with  his  tenants, 
his  wife,  his  son.  When  the  son  breaks  the  tradition  by 
falling  in  love  with  a  married  woman  and  meets  obsti- 
nacy with  obstinacy,  stupidity  with  stupidity,  all  "that  his 
father  can  think  of  is  that  he  wishes  he  had  sent  George 
to  Harrow  instead  of  Eton!  This,  the  author  comments, 
was  his  simple  creed : — 

"I  believe  in  my  father,  and  his  father,  and  his  father's  father, 
the  makers  and  keepers  of  my  estate;  and  I  beheve  in  myself,  and 
my  son,  and  my  son's  son.  And  I  believe  that  we  have  made  the 
country,  and  shall  keep  the  country  what  it  is.  And  I  believe  in  the 
Public  Schools  and  especially  the  Public  School  that  I  was  at.  And 
I  believe  in  my  social  equals  and  the  country  house,  and  in  things 
as  they  are,  for  ever  and  ever.     Amen." 

His  son,  equally  unintelligent  and  unattractive,  ruins 
himself  for  a  worthless  woman,  and  his  single  redeeming 
virtue,  that  of  constancy,  becomes  a  blind,  unreasoning 
jealousy.  Seldom  has  Galsworthy  drawn  father  and  son 
so  wholly  self-centred  and  disagreeable.  With  Mrs. 
Pendyce,  who  is  not  a  Pendyce  at  all,  but  a  Totteridge — 


202  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

not  a  provincial  but  a  true  aristocrat — a  gentle  soul,  the 
author  deals  gently,  almost  lovingly — most  lovingly  of 
all  with  Mr.  Pendyce's  other  devotee,  the  spaniel  John. 
All  these  are  strongly  conceived  and  firmly  drawn.  The 
appendages  of  the  country  house  and  the  outsiders — 
Gregory  Vigil  with  his  quixotic  romance  and  his  absurd 
philanthropic  organization — have  hardly — except  per- 
haps the  Rector — ^the  breath  of  Ufe. 

From  the  "crassness"  of  country  house  Ufe,  Gals- 
worthy turned  the  arrows  of  his  satire  on  the  artificiality 
of  London  artistic  and  philanthropic  circles  in  'Fra- 
ternity.' The  title  is  of  course  ironical,  the  novelist's 
view  being  that  no  fellow-feeling  is  possible  among 
classes  so  profoundly  separated  by  education,  habit,  and 
convention.  The  note  of  division  is  struck  in  the  ac- 
count of  'Bianca's  Day'  with  which  the  story  opens, 
and  the  climax  is  reached  when  Hilary  Dallison,  es- 
tranged from  his  wife  and  attracted  by  the  "little 
model,"  finds  he  has  not  the  courage  to  run  away  with 
her.  To  begin  with,  her  nails  were  not  clean,  and  when 
she  kissed  him  "the  touch  of  her  lips  was  moist  and  hot. 
The  scent  of  stale  violet  powder  came  from  her  warmed 
by  her  humanity.  It  penetrated  to  Hilary's  heart.  He 
started  back  in  sheer  physical  revolt." 

'The  Patrician'  offers  us  the  most  winning  family 
group  Galsworthy  has  yet  drawn,  from  the  fascinating 
little  Ann  to  her  no  less  charming  great-grandmother. 
Lord  Miltoun  is  hardly  the  characteristic  EngUsh  aristo- 
crat, and  his  father,  who  comes  much  nearer  the  modem 
type,  plays  a  secondary  role.  The  story  suffers  from  a 
shift  of  central  interest  from  Lord  Miltoun  in  the  first 
half  to  Lady  Barbara  in  the  second,  and  there  is  no  real 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  203 

suspense  in  either  case,  as  it  is  obvious  from  the  beginning 
that  both  will  remain  true  to  the  traditions  of  their  class; 
but  both  characters  are  subtly  analysed  and  powerfully 
as  well  as  skilfully  portrayed.  The  complete  passivity 
of  Mrs.  Noel  leaves  her  too  much  in  the  background  to 
be  distinctly  realized,  and  Courtier  never  becomes  alto- 
gether lifelike.  In  spite  of  much  excellent  craftsmanship, 
the  novel  won  only  a  succes  d'estime. 

In  'The  Dark  Flower'  Galsworthy  concentrated  on 
his  strongest  gift — ^the  analysis  of  romantic  passion. 
Besides  the  hero's  affection  for  the  gentle  Sylvia  whom  he 
marries  and  to  whom  he  constantly  returns,  he  suffers 
the  bitter  experiences  of  disillusion  with  an  older  woman 
in  his  youth,  of  blighting  tragedy  in  middle  Ufe,  and  of 
difficult  renunciation  in  the  years  when  his  senses  make 
their  last  effort  to  overcome  his  brain,  his  conscience  and 
his  will.  Throughout  he  retains  our  sympathy  and  re- 
spect because  of  his  essential  humanity  and  refinement. 
The  book  suffers  somewhat  both  from  its  division  into 
three  parts,  each  with  its  own  heroine,  and  from  dwelling 
continuously  on  the  same  note  of  passion,  but  it  is 
originally  conceived  and  powerfully  as  well  as  delicately 
executed. 

'The  Freelands'  brings  us  back  to  the  discussion  of 
one  of  the  most  important  social  questions  of  the  day — 
the  question  of  the  land  and  of  the  social  tyranny  exer- 
cised by  landowners.  The  Freeland  brothers  are  some- 
what artificially  set  off  against  each  other — Fehx  stands 
for  intellectualism  against  officiahsm  and  industriahsm, 
John  for  officialism  against  industrialism  and  intellectual- 
ism, Stanley  for  industrialism  against  officialism  and 
intellectualism.     But  this  is  merely  the  setting  for  the 


204  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

conflict  waged  by  the  young  rebels,  Derek  and  Sheila 
Freelands,  against  the  tyranny  of  Sir  Gerald  and  Lady 
Malloring,  the  model  landlords.  The  rebelUon  is,  of 
course,  a  failure,  and  the  arch  rebel,  Derek,  gives  up  the 
unequal  contest,  but  the  story  offers  Galsworthy  the  op- 
portunity of  saying  with  feeUng  and  emphasis  much  that 
he  had  in  his  heart.  The  contrast  that  he  draws  be- 
tween the  hfe  of  the  landlord  and  that  of  the  ordinary 
farm  labourer  will  serve  as  an  example: — 

"Your  Malloring  is  caUed  with  a  cup  of  tea,  at,  say,  seven  o'clock, 
out  of  a  nice,  clean,  warm  bed;  he  gets  into  a  bath  that  has  been  got 
ready  for  him;  into  clothes  and  boots  that  have  been  brushed  for 
him;  and  goes  down  to  a  room  where  there's  a  fire  burning  already 
if  it's  a  cold  day,  writes  a  few  letters,  perhaps,  before  eating  a  break- 
fast of  exactly  what  he  likes,  nicely  prepared  for  him,  and  reading 
the  newspaper  that  best  comforts  his  soul;  when  he  has  eaten  and 
read,  he  lights  his  cigar  or  his  pipe  and  attends  to  his  digestion  in  the 
most  sanitary  and  comfortable  fashion;  then  in  his  study  he  sits 
down  to  steady  direction  of  other  people,  either  by  interview  or  by 
writing  letters,  or  what  not.  In  this  way,  between  directing  people 
and  eating  what  he  likes,  he  passes  the  whole  day  except  that  for 
two  or  three  hours,  sometimes  indeed  seven  or  eight  hours,  he  at- 
tends to  his  physique  by  riding,  motoring,  playing  a  game  or  in- 
dulging in  a  sport  that  he  has  chosen  for  himself.  And,  at  the  end 
of  all  that,  he  probably  has  another  bath  that  has  been  made  ready 
for  him,  goes  down  to  a  good  dinner  that  has  been  cooked  for  him, 
smokes,  reads,  learns  and  inwardly  digests,  or  else  plays  cards, 
billiards  and  acts  host  till  he  is  sleepy,  and  so  to  bed  in  a  clean,  warm 
bed,  in  a  clean  fresh  room. 

"Now,  to  take  the  life  of  a  Gaunt.  He  gets  up  summer  and 
winter  much  earlier  out  of  a  bed  that  he  cannot  afford  time  and 
money  to  keep  too  clean  or  warm,  in  a  small  room  that  probably 
has  not  a  large  enough  window;  into  clothes  stiff  with  work  and  boots 
stiff  with  clay;  makes  something  hot  for  himself,  very  likely  brings 
some  of  it  to  his  wife  and  children ;  goes  out,  attending  to  his  digestion 
crudely  and  without  comfort;  works  with  his  hands  and  feet  from 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  205 

half-past  six  or  seven  in  the  morning  till  past  five  at  night,  except 
that  twice  he  stops  for  an  hour  or  so  and  eats  simple  things  that  he 
would  not  altogether  have  chosen  to  eat  if  he  could  have  had  his  will. 
He  goes  home  to  a  tea  that  has  been  got  ready  for  him,  and  has  a 
clean-up  without  assistance,  smokes  a  pipe  of  shag,  reads  a  news- 
paper perhaps  two  days  old,  and  goes  out  again  to  work  for  his  own 
good,  in  his  vegetable  patch,  or  to  sit  on  a  wooden  bench  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  beer  and  'baccy.'  And  so,  dead  tired,  but  not  from 
directing  other  people,  he  drowses  himself  to  early  lying  again  in  his 
doubtful  bed. 

"Candidly,  which  of  those  two  lives  demands  more  of  the  virtues 
on  which  human  life  is  foimded — courage  and  patience,  hardihood 
and  seK-sacrifice?  And  which  of  two  men  who  have  lived  those  two 
lives  well  has  most  right  to  the  word  'superior'?" 

'Beyond' — still  the  analysis  of  passionate  love,  this 
time  from  the  woman's  side — was  coldly  received  by  a 
public  intent  on  more  important  matters.  By  this 
time,  too  (1917)  the  public  and  the  critics  had  made  up 
their  minds  that  Galsworthy  was  better  as  a  playwright 
than  a  novelist.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  more  con- 
centrated and  more  plastic  medium  gives  scope  for  his 
powers  of  character  analysis  and  dialogue  and  supple- 
ments his  besetting  weakness — a  certain  flatness  in  the 
minor  personages,  who  were  rounded  out  by  the  skill  of 
the  actors  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  secure  for  the  in- 
terpretation of  his  dramatic  successes  alike  in  Manches- 
ter, London  and  New  York. 

His  first  play,  'The  Silver  Box,'  was  produced  in  the 
same  year  that  his  best  novel  'The  Man  of  Property' 
was  published  (1906).  The  play  deliberately  attempts 
a  formal  symmetry  which  is  one  of  Galsworthy's  fav- 
ourite dramatic  devices.  Jones,  an  "out-of-work," 
has  stolen  in  a  drunken  fit  of  resentment  from  Jack 
Borthwick,  the  idle  son  of  a  wealthy  Liberal  M.  P.,  a 


I 


206  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

purse  of  crimson  silk  which  Jack  in  a  drunken  fit  of  re- 
sentment has  stolen  from  "an  unknown  lady,  from  be- 
yond." Jones  has  taken  also  the  silver  cigarette  box, 
and  adds  to  the  compHcations  of  his  own  case  by  as- 
saulting the  police.  Jack  gets  a  scolding  from  an  indul- 
gent father;  Jones  gets  a  month's  hard  labour.  Jones 
is  removed  from  the  dock  shouting: — "Call  this  justice? 
What  about  'im?  'E  got  drunk!  'E  took  the  purse — 
'e  took  the  purse,  but  it's  'is  money  got  Hm  off — Justice!" 

There  are  additional  (and  perhaps  unnecessary)  touches 
of  pathos  in  the  crying  of  Jones's  child  outside  the 
Borthwick's  house  and  the  disposal  of  two  forsaken  Httle 
girls  by  the  police  magistrate  before  Jones's  case  comes 
on;  but  the  real  effect  of  the  play  consists  in  the  contrast 
between  the  Borthwick  household,  purseproud  and  pam- 
pered, and  the  Jones  family,  driven  to  desperation  by 
poverty.  Mrs.  Jones,  who  furnishes  the  connection  be- 
tween the  two  by  acting  as  charwoman  in  the  Borthwick 
house,  is  an  admirable  character  study,  very  effective 
on  the  stage. 

Passing  by  'Joy,'  which  is  merely  a  dramatization  of 
the  psychological  gulf  which  stretches  between  two  gen- 
erations, "a  play  on  the  letter  'I',"  we  have  a  similar 
contrast  in  '  Strife ' ;  the  issue  is  a  strike  at  the  Trenartha 
Tin-Plate  works,  whose  chairman,  John  Anthony,  is 
balanced  against  the  workmen's  leader,  David  Roberts, 
the  Directors  against  the  Workmen's  Committee,  the 
Manager  against  the  Trades  Union  Official.  Anthony 
and  Roberts  are  both  fighting  to  win,  regardless  of  con- 
sequences, and  both  men  are  broken  by  the  determination 
of  their  supporters  to  end  the  struggle  by  compromise — 
on  the  very  terms  that  were  suggested  when  the  strike 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  207 

began.  So  far  Galsworthy  holds  the  balance  even  be- 
tween Capital  and  Labour,  but  it  is  obvious  that  his 
sympathies  are  on  the  side  of  Labour,  though  he  makes 
the  capitalist's  son  and  daughter  full  of  kindly  eagerness 
to  do  what  they  can  for  the  workpeople.  The  real  in- 
terest of  the  play  Ues  in  the  conflict  between  the  two 
masterful  characters,  Anthony  and  Roberts,  who  are 
both  splendidly  realized,  the  former  with  very  few  words, 
the  latter  with  burning  eloquence  about  the  wrongs  of 
his  class. 

'  Justice '  is  a  protest  against  the  denial  of  the  privilege 
of  divorce  to  the  poor  and  against  the  severity  of  English 
prison  administration,  which,  indeed,  it  did  something  to 
ameliorate.  It  was  preceded  in  order  of  composition — 
though  not  of  production — by  '  The  Eldest  Son '  (written 
1909,  produced  1912),  which  transfers  to  the  stage  the 
atmosphere  and  principal  characters  of  '  The  Country 
House,'  though  the  ilUcit  tie  formed  by  the  son  is  not 
now  with  a  married  woman  of  his  own  class,  but  with 
his  mother's  maid.  On  the  stage,  father  and  son  take 
on  more  humanity — they  are  more  living  people  and  less 
types  than  in  the  novel,  and  the  father's  determination  is 
stiffened  by  previous  severity  to  a  keeper  on  his  own  estate 
who  has  been  guilty  of  a  similar  offence;  but  the  point 
insisted  on  is  the  same — the  "crassness"  of  country 
house  life,  its  immoveable  adherence  to  caste  and  tradi- 
tion. 

One  other  play  of  Galsworthy's  seems  to  call  for  com- 
ment on  account  of  its  social  significance,  *  The  Pigeon.' 
Wellwyn  is  our  old  friend  Shelton  of  '  The  Island  Phari- 
sees,' richly  humanized  and  provided  with  a  sensible 
daughter.     The  Frenchman  Ferrand  is  taken  over  under 


13 


208  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

the  same  name  without  change,  and  is  the  spokesman  of 
the  outcasts  for  whom  the  drama  makes  an  impassioned 
plea.  By  the  side  of  these  three, — ^the  vagabond  French- 
man, the  broken-down  cabman,  and  the  loose-Uving 
flower-girl — the  Professor,  the  Magistrate  and  the 
Clergyman  are  mere  mechanical  figures  stuck  into  the 
play  to  prove  the  foolishness  of  the  attempt  "to  make 
wild  birds  tame": — 

"Ferrand.  They  do  a  good  work  while  they  attend  with  their 
theories  to  the  sick,  and  the  tame  old,  and  the  good  unfortunate 
deserving.  Above  all  to  the  little  children.  But,  Monsieur,  when 
all  is  done  there  are  always  us  hopeless  ones.  What  can  they  do  with 
me,  Monsieur,  with  that  girl,  or  with  that  old  man?  Ah!  Monsieiu", 
we,  too,  'ave  our  qualities,  we  others — it  wants  you  courage  to  under- 
take a  career  like  mine,  or  a  life  like  that  young  girl's.  We  wild  ones — 
we  know  a  thousand  times  more  of  life  than  ever  will  those  sirs. 
They  waste  their  time  trying  to  make  rooks  white.  Be  kind  to  us 
if  you  will,  or  let  us  alone  like  Mees  Ann,  but  do  not  try  to  change  our 
skins.  Leave  us  to  live,  or  leave  us  to  die  when  we  like  in  the  free 
air.  If  you  do  not  wish  of  us,  you  have  but  to  shut  your  pockets  and 
your  doors — we  shall  die  the  faster. 

Wellvryn  (with  agitation).  But  that,  you  know — ^we  can't  do — 
now  can  we? 

Ferrand.  If  you  cannot,  how  is  it  our  fault?  The  harm  we  do  to 
others — is  it  so  much?  If  I  am  criminal,  dangerous — shut  me  up! 
1  would  not  pity  myself,  nevare.  But  we  in  whom  something 
moves — ^like  that  flame,  Monsieur,  that  cannot  keep  stiU — we  others 
— we  are  not  many — that  must  have  motion  in  our  lives,  do  not  let 
them  make  us  prisoners  with  their  theories  because  we  are  not  like 
them — it  is  life  itself  they  would  enclose." 

This  feeUng  for  liberty  and  this  sympathy  for  those 
who  are  under  the  heel  of  circumstance  find  direct  expres- 
sion in  the  collected  sketches  and  essays.  'A  Com- 
mentary' and  'The  Lost  Dog,'  'Old  Age'  and  'Fear,' 
'The  Mother'  and  'Hope' — to  take  selections  from  one 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  209 

volume  only — plead  the  cause  of  the  humble  poor,  '  The 
House  of  Silence'  and  'The  Prisoner'  the  cause  of  prison 
reform,  'Justice'  points  out  with  stinging  irony  the  in- 
equalities of  the  English  divorce  law — a  subject  to  which 
Galsworthy  returns  again  and  again.  But  while  the 
essays  contain  much  sincere  and  powerful  writing,  they 
are,  as  a  whole,  less  effective  as  criticisms  of  the  social 
system  than  either  the  novels  or  the  plays.  An  essay 
on  drama  in  one  of  the  later  volumes  is,  however,  of 
special  interest  because  it  exhibits  and  explains  Gals- 
worthy's own  artistic  methods.  He  says,  "A  drama 
must  be  shaped  so  as  to  have  a  spire  of  meaning.  Every 
grouping  of  life  and  character  has  its  inherent  moral; 
and  the  business  of  the  dramatist  is  so  to  pose  the  group 
as  to  bring  that  moral  poignantly  to  the  hght  of  day." 
In  this  matter  of  the  moral,  there  are  three  courses  open 
to  the  serious  dramatist :  (1)  He  may  set  forth  popular  and 
accepted  views;  (2)  He  may  set  forth  his  own  views, 
''the  more  effectively  if  they  are  the  opposite  of  what  the 
public  wishes  to  have  placed  before  it,  presenting  them 
so  that  the  audience  may  swallow  them  like  powder  in  a 
spoonful  of  jam."  (3)  He  may  set  before  the  public 
"no  cut-and-dried  codes,  but  the  phenomena  of  life 
and  character,  selected  and  combined,  but  not  distorted 
by  the  dramatist's  outlook,  set  down  without  fear,  favour 
or  prejudice,  leaving  the  public  to  draw  such  poor  moral 
as  nature  may  afford."  Obviously  this  third  method  is 
the  one  Galsworthy  himself  prefers — it  requires  detach- 
ment, sympathy,  the  far  view,  and  it  depends  mainly 
on  the  interpretation  of  character. 

"The  dramatist's  licence,  in  fact,  ends  with  his  design.     In  con- 
ception alone  he  is  free.     He  may  take  what  character  or  group  of 

15 


210  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

characters  he  chooses,  see  them  with  what  eyes,  knit  them  with  what 
idea,  within  the  limits  of  his  temperament;  but  once  taken,  seen, 
and  knitted,  he  is  bound  to  treat  them  like  a  gentleman,  with  the 
tenderest  consideration  of  their  mainsprings.  Take  care  of  char- 
acter; action  and  dialogue  will  take  care  of  themselves." 

It  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  Galsworthy  despises 
plot  construction,  for  which  indeed  he  has  little  gift;  but 
his  neglect  of  the  element  of  action  has  two  resulting 
weaknesses.  In  the  first  place,  his  characters  often  fail 
to  develop  within  the  action,  either  of  the  novel  or  the 
play;  the  vast  majority  are  the  same  at  the  end  as  they 
were  at  the  beginning,  the  impression  conveyed  is  that  of 
a  dramatic  situation,  not  of  the  ever-moving  current  of 
life.  In  the  second  place,  Galsworthy  is  inclined,  for 
lack  of  a  well-constructed  plot,  to  build  up  his  charac- 
ters symmetrically,  one  balanced  against  the  other,  as 
in  'Strife'  and  'The  Pigeon'  and  the  three  brothers  in 
"The  Freelands' — and  this  adds  to  one's  sense  of  arti- 
ficiaUty.  He  is  not  a  born  story-teller  or  dramatist,  and 
though  he  always  writes  well — his  style  is  a  never-faihng 
pleasure — one  has  often  a  consciousness  of  thinness  in 
his  imaginative  work.  The  beauty  of  his  prose  and  his 
artistic  sincerity  may  save  his  work  from  oblivion  when 
that  of  more  successful  competitors  is  forgotten,  but  it 
seems  likely  to  be  treasured  by  the  few  who  can  appre- 
ciate deUcacy  and  subtlety  and  do  not  ask  either  for  the 
excitement  of  a  stirring  action  or  for  the  intellectual 
stimulus  of  brilliant  paradox.  He  has  no  'ism  to  offer 
as  a  cure  for  all  human  ills.  He  sees  men  bound  by  class 
limitations — the  poor  by  actual  want,  the  rich  by  ig- 
norance and  prejudice — and  he  has  found  no  remedy 
except   imderstanding   and   sympathy.     No    critic   has 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  211 

ever  revealed  the  shortcomings  of  his  own  class  with 
greater  fearlessness;  no  social  observer  has  set  forth  the 
wrongs  and  sufferings  of  the  down-trodden  with  deeper 
sympathy.  So  long  as  the  EngHsh  social  system  pro- 
duces such  inequality,  ignorance  and  suffering,  EngHsh 
readers  will  not  be  lacking  for  an  English  critic  who  has 
had  the  courage  and  skill  to  turn  on  them  a  mind  of 
singularly  delicate  and  penetrating  power.  Some  of 
these  inequalities  have  been  softened  or  diminished  by  the 
stress  of  the  Great  War;  others  are  perhaps  deeply 
founded  in  human  nature  and  will  never  entirely  disap- 
pear. But  it  will  be  long  years  before  a  generation  will 
arise  which  has  no  need  of  the  message  of  consideration 
and  human  kindness  which  Galsworthy  has  conveyed 
with  so  much  subtlety  and  artistic  charm. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

NOVELS 
1898    'Jocelyn.' 

1900  'ViUa  Rubein.'  v> 
1904    'The  Island  Pharisees.' 

1906  '  The  M  an  of  Property.'  -^  * 

^^  -1907  'The  Country  House.' 

■"^  1909  '  Fraternity.' 

1911  'The  Patrician.' 
.^  1913  '  The  Dark  Flower.' 

^  1915    'TheFreelands.' 
^    1917    'Beyond.' 

ESSAYS  AND  STORIES 

1897    ' From  the  Four  Winds.' 

1901  'A  Man  of  Devon.' 
■1908     'A  Commentary.' 

1910  'A  Motley.' 

1912  '  The  Inn  of  Tranquillity.' 
1915  '  The  Little  Man  and  other  Satires.' 
1918  'Five  Tales.' 

PLAYS 

1906  'The  SUver  Box.' 

1907  'Joy.' 
1909    'Strife.' 

^    i910    'Justice.' 

-^191 1     '  The  Little  Dream.* 

-^1912     'The  Pigeon.' 

.  'The  Eldest  Son.' 

y^  1914    '  The  Fugitive.' 
'The  Mob.' 
1915    'A  Bite' Love.' 

POEMS 
1912    'Moods,  Songs  and  Doggerels.' 

BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  CRITICAL 

Sheila  Kaye-Smith,  'John  Galsworthy,'  1916. 

,.  ..,.-,.„ ..... ... ... .  .-..-.... .         .^  ... 


CHAPTER  XII 
ARNOLD  BENNETT  (1867-        ) 

The  greatest  obstacle  to  the  permanence  of  Arnold 
Bennett's  literary  reputation  is  the  mass  of  commonplace 
production  which  threatens  to  distract  attention  from  his 
few  masterpieces.  One  may  pass  an  idle  hour  pleasantly 
enough  with  what  Bennett  calls  'fantasies,'  'frolics/ 
'melodramas,'  'idyllic  diversions'  (and  some  of  the 
books  he  calls  novels  really  belong  to  the  same  class), 
but  what  has  the  student  of  literature  to  do  with  such 
pretentious  pot-boilers  (Bennett  applies  the  word  indis- 
criminately to  his  own  work  and  George  Meredith's 
novels)  as  'How  to  Live  on  Twenty-four  Hours  a  Day,' 
'The  Reasonable  Life,'  'Friendship  and  Happiness,' 
'The  Married  Life,'  etc.,  which  the  author  classes  under 
'  Belles-Lettres,'  and  which  his  publishers  (not,  one 
hop^s,  himself)  heralded  as  containing  "big,  strong, 
vital,  thinking"?  The  danger  is  that  this  over-adver- 
tised deadweight  of  platitudes  will  overwhelm  Bennett's 
reputation  as  a  conscientious  artist  and  hinder  apprecia- 
tion of  his  really  significant  work.  To  those  who  are 
acquainted  with  both  it  must  be  an  astonishment  that 
the  author  of  these  cheap  popular  essays  should  also  be 
the  novelist  of  'The  Old  Wives'  Tale'  and  the  'Clay- 
hanger'  trilogy. 

The  key  to  the  enigma  is  supplied  by  Arnold  Bennett 
himself.  In  'The  Truth  about  an  Author,'  originally 
published  anonymously  in  the  columns  of  the  'Academy,* 

^13  -■ 


II 


i 


214  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

and  reprinted  years  afterwards  under  the  author's  name, 
Bennett  gives  an  unblushingly  veracious  account  of  his 
early  struggles  and  successes.  Hb  was  born  near  Hanley, 
the  'Hanbridge'  of  the  Five  Towns  which  his  novels 
were  to  launch  into  literary  fame,  and  received  a  some- 
what limited  education  at  the  neighbouring  'Middle 
School'  of  Newcastle,  his  highest  scholastic  achievement 
being  the  passing  of  the  London  University  Matricula- 
tion Examination.  Some  youthful  adventures  in  jour- 
nalism were  perhaps  significant  of  latent  power  and 
literary  inclination,  but  a  small  provincial  newspaper 
offers  no  great  encouragement  to  youthful  ambition,  and 
Enoch  Arnold  Bennett  (as  he  was  then  called)  made  his 
way  at  21  as  a  solicitor's  clerk  to  London,  where  he  was 
soon  earning  a  modest  hvelihood  by  "  a  natural  gift  for 
the  preparation  of  bills  of  costs  for  taxation."  He  had 
never  "wanted  to  write"  (except  for  money)  and  had 
read  almost  nothing  of  Scott,  Jane  Austen,  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  the  Brontes,  and  George  EUot,  though  he  had 
devoured  Ouida,  boys'  books  and  serials.  His  first  real 
interest  in  a  book  was  "  not  as  an  instrument  for  obtaining 
information  or  emotion,  but  as  a  book,  printed  at  such 
a  place  in  such  a  year  by  so-and-so,  bound  by  so-and- 
so,  and  carrying  colophons,  registers,  water-marks,  and 
f antes  d'impression,"  It  was  when  he  showed  a  rare  copy 
of  *Manon  Lescaut'  to  an  artist  and  the  latter  remarked 
that  it  was  one  of  the  ugliest  books  he  had  ever  seen, 
that  Bennett,  now  in  his  early  twenties,  first  became 
aware  of  the  appreciation  of  beauty.  He  won  twenty 
guineas  in  a  competition,  conducted  by  a  popular  weekly, 
for  a  humorous  condensation  of  a  sensational  serial,  being 
assured  that  this  was  "art,"  and  the  same  paper  paid 


ARNOLD  BENNETT  215 

him  a  few  shillings  for  a  short  article  on  'How  a  bill  of 
costs  is  drawn  up.'  Meanwhile  he  was  "gorging*''  on 
English  and  French  literature,  his  chief  idols  being  the 
brothers  de  Goncourt,  de  Maupassant,  and  Turgenev, 
and  he  got  a  story  into  the  'Yellow  Book.'  He  saw  that 
he  could  write,  and  he  determnied  to  adopt  the  vocation 
of  letters.  After  a  humiliating  period  of  free  lancing 
in  Fleet  Street,  he  became  assistant  editor  and  later 
editor  of  'Woman.'  When  he  was  31,  his  first  novel,  'A 
Man  from  the  North,'  was  pubUshed,  both  in  England 
and  America,  and  with  the  excess  of  the  profits  over  the 
cost  of  typewriting  he  bought  a  new  hat.  At  the  end  of 
the  following  year  he  wrote  in  his  diary: — 

"This  year  I  have  written  335,340  words,  grand  total;  224  articles 
and  stories  and  four  instalments  of  a  serial  called  'The  Gates  of 
Wrath'  have  actually  been  published,  also  my  book  of  plays,  'Polite 
Farces.'  My  work  included  six  or  eight  short  stories  not  yet  pub- 
lished, also  the  greater  part  of  a  55,000  word  serial '  Love  and  Life ' 
for  Tillotsons,  and  the  whole  draft,  80,000  words,  of  my  Stafford- 
shire novel  'Anna  Tellwright. ' " 

This  last  was  not  published  in  book  form  till  1902 
under  the  title  of  '  Anna  of  the  Five  Towns ' ;  but  in  the 
ten  years  that  had  elapsed  since  hefatn'S'to  London,  Ben- 
nett had  risen  from  a  clerk  at  six  dollars  a  week  to  be  a 
successful  "editor,  novelist,  dramatist,  critic,  connois- 
seur of  all  arts"  with  a  comfortable  suburban  residence. 
Still  he  was  not  satisfied;  he  was  weary  of  journalism 
and  the  tyranny  of  his  Board  of  Directors.  He  threw  up 
his  editorial  post,  with  its  certain  income,  and  retired 
first  to  the  country  and  then  to  a  cottage  at  Fontaine- 
bleau  to  devote  himself  to  literature. 

In  the  autumn  of  1903,  when  Bennett  used  to  dine 


I 


'4 


I 


I 


I 


\ 


216  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

frequently  in  a  Paris  restaurant,  it  happened  that  a  fat 
old  woman  came  in  who  aroused  almost  universal  merri- 
ment by  her  eccentric  behaviour.  The  novelist  re- 
flected: "This  woman  was  once  young,  slim,  perhaps 
beautiful;  certainly  free  from  these  ridiculous  manner- 
isms. Very  probably  she  is  unconscious  of  her  singu- 
larities. Her  case  is  a  tragedy.  One  ought  to  be  able  to 
make  a  heart-rending  novel  out  of  a  woman  such  as  she." 
The  idea  then  occurred  to  him  of  writing  the  book  which 
afterwards  became  'The  Old  Wives'  Tale/  and  in  order 
to  go  one  better  than  <]ruy  de  Maupassant's  *  Une  Vie ' 
he  determined  to  make  it  the  hfe-history  of  two  women 
instead  of  one.  Constance,  the  more  ordinary  sister, 
was  the  original  heroine;  Sophia,  the  more  independent 
and  attractive  one,  was  created  "out  of  bravado." 
The  project  occupied  Bennett's  mind  for  some  years, 
during  which  he  produced  five  or  six  novels  of  smaller 
scope,  but  in  the  autumn  of  1907  he  began  to  write 
'The  Old  Wives'  Tale'  and  finished  it  in  July,  1908.  It 
was  published  the  same  autumn,  and  though  its  immedi- 
ate reception  was  not  encouraging,  before  the  winter  was 
over  it  was  recognized  both  in  England  and  America 
as  a  work  of  genius.  The  novelist's  reputation  was  up- 
held, if  not  increased,  by  the  publication  of  'Clay- 
hanger'  in  1910,  and  in  June,  1911,  the  most  conservative 
of  American  critical  authorities,  the  'New  York  Post' 
could  pronounce  judgment  in  these  terms: — 

"Mr.  Bennett's  Bursley  is  not  merely  one  single  stupid  English 
provincial  town.  His  Baineses  and  Clayhangers  are  not  simply 
average  middle  class  provincials  foredoomed  to  humdrum  and  the 
drab  shadows  of  experience.  His  Bursley  is  every  provincial  town, 
his  Baineses  are  all  townspeople  whatsoever  under  the  sun.  He 
professes  nothing  of  the  kind;  but  with  quiet  smiling  patience,  with 


ARNOLD  BENNETT  217 

a  multitude  of  impalpable  touches,  clothes  his  scene  and  its  humble 
figures  in  an  atmosphere  of  pity  and  understanding.  These  little 
people,  he  seems  to  say,  are  as  important  to  themselves  as  you  are  to 
yoiu-self,  or  as  I  am  to  myself.  Their  strength  and  weakness  are 
ours;  their  lives,  like  ours,  are  rounded  with  a  sleep.  And  because 
they  stand  in  their  fashion  for  aU  human  character  and  experience, 
there  is  even  a  sort  of  beauty  in  them  if  you  will  but  look  for  it." 

The  appreciation  is  a  just  one,  and  suggests  the  further 
elucidation  of  a  side  of  Bennett's  art  which  is  often  mis- 
understood. He  is  often  regarded  as  the  unsparing 
critic  of  provinciahsm;  he  is  really  its  apostle.  It  is  not 
because  he  dislikes  and  despises  the  life  of  the  Five  Towns 
that  he  describes  it  with  such  minute  care,  it  is  because 
he  loves  it.  This  is  in  accord  with  a  well-estabUshed 
principle  which  Bennett  has  himself  very  clearly  set 
forth:— 

"The  sense  of  beauty  [is]  indispensable  to  the  creative  artist. 
Every  creative  artist  has  it,  in  his  degree.  He  is  an  artist  because 
he  has  it.  An  artist  works  imder  the  stress  of  instinct.  No  man's 
instinct  can  draw  him  towards  material  which  repels  him — the 
fact  is  obvious.  Obviously,  whatever  kind  of  life  the  novelist 
writes  about,  he  has  been  charmed  and  seduced  by  it,  he  is  under 
its  spell — that  is,  he  has  seen  beauty  in  it.  He  could  have  no  other 
reason  for  writing  about  it.  He  may  see  a  strange  sort  of  beauty ; 
he  may — indeed  he  does — see  a  sort  of  beauty  that  nobody  has 
quite  seen  before;  he  may  see  a  sort  of  beauty  that  none  save  a  few 
odd  spirits  ever  will  or  can  be  made  to  see.  But  he  does  see  beauty." 
('The  Author's  Craft.') 

To  suppose  that  the  noveUst,  who  was  born  and  spent 
his  youth  in  the  Five  Towns  and  made  his  own  Uterary 
reputation  at  the  same  time  as  he  made  theirs,  regards 
them  with  the  superficial  condescension  of  the  ordinary 
London  journalist  is  a  complete  misapprehension.  Ben- 
nett says  so  himself  in  so  many  words.     "It  seems  to 


/ 


218  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

me,"  he  wrote  in  1907,  "the  most  EngUsh  piece  of  Eng- 
land that  I  ever  came  across.  With  extraordinary 
clearness  I  see  it  as  absurdly,  ridiculously,  splendidly 
English!  All  the  Enghsh  characteristics  are,  quite 
remarkably,  exaggerated  in  the  Potteries."  To  any- 
one who  knows  English  provincial  Ufe,  this  is  an  ob- 
vious truth,  and  the  fact  that  Bennett  makes  kindly  fun 
of  the  oddities  and  limitations  of  his  provincial  charac- 
ters says  nothing  to  the  contrary.  Constance  and 
Sophia  are  provincial  heroines — but  they  are  heroines. 
Unintelligent,  self-centred,  eccentric,  if  you  like,  but  full 
of  honesty  and  courage,  of  practical  ability  and  sincere 
affection.  Take,  for  instance,  the  first  "Good  Night" 
of  the  two  sisters  after  their  long  years  of  separation: — 

"They  looked  at  each  other  again,  with  timid  affectionateness. 
They  did  not  kiss.  The  thought  in  both  their  minds  was: — 'We 
couldn't  keep  on  kissing  every  day.'  But  there  was  a  vast  amount 
of  quiet,  restrained  affection,  of  mutual  confidence  and  respect,  even 
of  tenderness  in  their  tones." 

Above  all,  they  have  common  sense,  the  knowledge  how 
to  live.  When  Madame  Foucault  makes  her  confession, 
Sophia  thinks  "  What  a  fool  you  have  been! "  not,  "  What 
a  sinner!"  "If  I  couldn't  have  made  a  better  courtesan 
than  this  pitiable  woman  I  would  have  drowned  myself. " 
It  is  character  that  saves  Sophia  from  the  treachery  of 
Gerald  Scales  and  that  makes  her  repulse  Chirac.  "The 
instinct  which  repulsed  him  was  not  within  her  control. 
Just  as  a  shy  man  will  obstinately  refuse  an  invitation 
which  is  he  hungering  to  accept,  so,  though  not  from 
shyness,  she  was  compelled  to  repulse  Chirac."  It  is  an 
inherited  and  traditional  instinct  for  decency  and  order. 
It  is  the  same  instinct  that  makes  Sophia  shrink  from  the 


ARNOLD  BENNETT  219 

dust  in  the  comers  of  Madame  Foucault's  room,  and  the 
showiness  of  the  furniture.  "Nothing  in  it,  she  found, 
was  'good.'  And  in  St.  Luke's  Square  'goodness' 
meant  honest  workmanship,  permanence,  the  absence  of 
pretence." 

It  is  the  same  fundamental  solidity  of  character  which 
saves  HildguXeesways  from  the  consequences  of  her  own 
waywardness  »an4-«nables  her  to  make  a  success  of  life 
with  Edwin  Clayhanger  in  the  old-fashioned  provincial 
way  of  material  advancement  and  family  affection.  The 
Orgreaves  in  the  same  series  of  novels  are  a  model — 
afinost  an  ideal — family,  for  they  have,  in  addition  to  the 
everyday  virtues,  a  keener  sense  of  beauty  than  Bennett 
claims  for  the  ordinary  Five  Towns  families.  He  says 
in  'The  Truth  about  an  Author,'  speaking  of  his  own 
youth: —    ""'---■ 

"I  had  lived  in  a  world  where  beauty  was  not  mentioned,  seldom 
thought  of.  I  believe  I  had  scarcely  heard  the  adjective  'beautiful' 
applied  to  anything  whatever,  save  confections  like  Gounod's 
'There  is  a  green  hill  far  away.'  Modem  oak  sideboards  were 
called  handsome,  and  Christmas  cards  were  called  pretty,  and  that 
was  about  all." 

So,  among  the  provincial  characters  of  'What  the 
PubUc  Wants,'  only  John  Worgan  is  described  as  "highly 
educated,"  "with  very  artistic  tastes,"  but  we  are  told 
that  "all  these  people  are  fundamentally  'decent'  and 
sagacious,"  and  it  is  their  point  of  view  that  is  upheld, 
despite  their  queer  clothes,  food  and  manners. 

Substantially  their  point  of  view  is  Arnold  Bennett's 
own  point  of  view,  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  his  treatment 
of  them  is  sympathetic,  for  he  has  remained  a  thorough 
provincial  at  heart.    He  admires  their  qualities  of  faith- 


\ 


220  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

fulness  and  endurance,  and  is  never  tired  of  insisting  on 
the  essential  wholesomeness  and  lightness  of  English 
provincial  life,  though  he  is  not  bUnd  to  its  aesthetic 
shortcomings.  Of  its  shortcomings  on  another  side — ^its 
narrowness  of  vision  and  lack  of  spirituahty — he  is  only- 
half  conscious.  Religion  plays  a  curiously  small  part 
in  any  of  his  books,  and  the  great  political  and  ""social 
questions  of  the  period  he  describes  find  only  a  faint 
echo  now  and  then,  almost  always  on  their  mechanical 
or  material  side.  We  learn  in  'The  Old  Wives'  Tale' 
about  such  changes  as  the  introducftion  of  public  baths, 
free  Ubraries,  municipal  parks,  telephones,  and  electric 
tramcars  and  automobiles,  and  in  '  Clayhanger,'  we  have 
references  to  parUamentary  elections7-st»kes,  and  reli- 
gious revivals,  but  the  readw  would  hardly  gather  that 
in  the  period  covered  by  these  two  novels  the  intellectual, 
social  and  political  Ufe  of  England  had  undergone  revo- 
lution. 

There  is  the  same  defect  in  Bennett's  novel  dealing 
with  the  earUer  years  of  the  War,  'The  Pretty  Lady.' 
It  is  noteworthy  that  he  chooses  to  see  the'^eat  struggle 
through  the  eyes  of  a  Parisian  courtesan,  flung  upon 
Leicester  Square  by  the  tide  of  the  Belgian  invasion,  and 
of  a  London  man  about  town,  "sobered  to  serious  work  as 
a  member  of  a  war  committee  and  carrying  into  his 
amours  the  systematic  punctuality  of  business.  G.  J. 
Hoape  may  have  acquired  some  London  polish,  birt""h'5" 
Was'  surely  born  in  one  of  the  Five  Towns.  The  sohd 
painting  of  this  character  contrasts  with  the  sketchiness 
of  the  portraits  of  the  neurotic  London  ladies  who  seek 
in  war  charities  a  new  form  of  excitement.  The  'pretty 
lady'  herself  is  somewhat  dimly  realized;  perhaps  she 


ARNOLD  BENNETT  221 

would  be  more  convincing  if  she  were  allowed  to  talk 
French,  for  the  literal  translation  of  her  terms  of  en- 
dearment fails  as  a  literary  device  to  give  any  touch  of 
actuaUty;  but  in  any  case  it  would  be  hard  to  away  with 
her  mysticism,  which  is  twice  associated  with  purely 
accidental  coincidence.  That  she  should  obey  the  un- 
uttered  summons  of  a  lover  who  happens,  all  unkno^vn 
to  her,  to  be  in  the  next  street  might  be  tolerated,  but 
that  she  should  again  hear  his  voice  when  he  is  not  there 
and  thus  by  an  evil  chance  wrongly  convince  her  regular 
protector,  who  happens  to  be  looking  out  of  his  club 
window  at  the  time,  of  her  faithlessness,  is  too  much. 
The  external  features  of  London  in  1916-17  are  vividly 
presented — the  dark  streets  and  the  ZeppeHn  raids, 
committee  meetings  and  war  charities  feverishly  alter- 
nating with  revues  and  night  clubs — ^but  apart  from  these 
incidental  interests  the  story  is  unsatisfactory  either  as  a 
rendering  of  the  EngUsh  mind  at  a  period  of  crisis  or  as 
a  study  of  particular  persons  under  the  strain  of  deep 
emotion.  It  is  upon  the  studies  of  provincial  life  be- 
fore the  War  that  Arnold  Bennett's  fame  seems  likely 
to  rest. 


c^ 


-V 


.1898 
/^1902 
^  1903 
-^  1904 
^<i905 


1906 
1908 

-  1910 
1911 

^1913 
1914 
1916 
1918 


^ 


^ 
^ 


X 


'A  Man  from  the  North.' 

'Anna  of  the  Five  Towns.' 

'Leonora.' 

'A  Great  Man.' 

'Sacred  and  Profane  Love.' 

'The  Book  of  Carlotta.') 
'Whom  God  hath  Joined.' 
'Buried  Alive.' 
'The  Old  Wives'  Tale.' 
'Clayhanger.' 
'The  Card.'  (U.S. 
'Hilda  Lessways.' 
'The  Regent.' 
'The  Price  of  Love.' 
'These  Twain.' 
'The  Pretty  Lady.' 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


NOVELS 


(Revised  edition,  U.  S.  1911: 


'  Denry  the  Audacious.') 


SHORT  STORIES 

1905     'Tales  of  the  Five  Towns.' 

1907     '  The  Grim  Smile  of  the  Five  Towns.' 

1912     'The  Matador  of  the  Five  Towns.' 


y 


PLAYS 

1908  'Cupid  and  Commonsense.' 

1909  'What  the  Public  Wants.' 
12     'Milestones.'     (With  Edward  Knoblauch). 

'The  Honeymoon.' 

1913  'The  Great  Adventure.' 
1918    'TheTiUe.' 

BELLES  LETTRES 

1903     '  The  Truth  about  an  Author.' 

1912    'Those  United  States.'     (U.  S. :  'Your  United  States.') 

1914  'The  Author's  Craft.' 

There  is  a  little  book  about  Arnold  Bennett  by  F.  J.  Harvey  Dar- 
ton,  in  th^  '  Writers  of  the  Day '  series. 

222 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT 

From  whatever  point  of  view  it  may  be  studied,  the 
Irish  Renaissance  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  Hterary 
movements  of  the  time.  It  seems  idle  to  discuss  whether 
it  really  belongs  to  English  or  to  Irish  literature  (the  dis- 
tinction between  English  and  American  literature  being 
already  recognized),  and  almost  as  idle  to  ask  whether 
the  poets  produced  the  Movement  or  the  Movement 
produced  the  poets.  Yeats  and  Synge  would  have  been 
men  of  letters  without  the  Irish  Revival,  but  without  it 
they  would  not  have  been  the  same  men  of  letters. 
Possibly  they  contributed  more  to  the  Movement  than 
they  gained  from  it,  but  that  they  were  greatly  influenced 
by  it  cannot  be  doubted. 

The  Movement  is  perhaps  rather  overweighted  with 
literary  history,  but  it  is  worth  while  to  put  on  record  its 
humble  beginnings  and  the  important  steps  in  its  develop- 
ment. Its  first  historian  was  W.  P.  Ryan,  whose  little 
book  was  published  in  1894,  when  the  Movement  was 
hardly  more  than  under  way,  as  is  indicated  by  his  title : 
— '  The  Irish  Literary  Revival,  its  History,  Pioneers  and 
Possibilities.'  According  to  Mr.  Ryan,  the  Movement 
began  in  the  early  eighties,  with  the  Southwark  Irish 
Literary  Club,  which  in  1890  moved  to  the  neighbouring 
district  of  Clapham,  and  in  1891  changed  its  name  to  the 
Irish  Literary  Society,  London.  W.  B.  Yeats,  who  had 
been  an  active  worker  in  the  London  Society,  helped  in 

223 


224  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

1892  in  the  foundation  of  the  Irish  National  Literary 
Society  at  Dublin.  Two  addresses  delivered  by  Sir 
Charles  Gavan  Duffy,  as  President,  to  the  London  So- 
ciety in  1892-3,  one  by  Dr.  Sigerson,  and  one  by  Dr. 
Douglas  Hyde  to  the  Dublin  Society  in  1892  were  pub- 
lished together  in  1894  under  the  title  'The  Revival  of 
Irish  Literature'  and  set  forth,  still  somewhat  vaguely, 
the  aims  of  the  founders.  Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy's 
principal  theme  was  the  'New  Irish  Library,'  of  which  a 
dozen  volumes  were  published  under  his  editorship  by 
1897;  Dr.  Sigerson  dealt  with  the  glorious  past  of  Irish 
literature,  but  had  no  very  definite  plans  for  the  future; 
Dr.  Douglas  Hyde's  paper  on  'The  Necessity  for  De- 
Anglicizing  Ireland'  blew  a  trumpet  blast,  not  merely 
reproaching  the  Irish  people  for  their  neglect  of  Irish 
tradition,  language  and  literature  for  the  past  century, 
but  urging  every  Irishman  "to  set  his  face  against  this 
constant  running  to  England  for  our  books,  literature, 
music,  games,  fashions,  and  ideas"  and  "to  do  his  best 
to  help  the  Irish  race  to  develop  in  future  upon  Irish 
lines."  Meanwhile,  at  the  inaugural  lecture  of  the 
London  Society  in  1893,  the  Rev.  Stopford  Brooke  had 
drawn  up  a  definite  programme.  Taking  it  for  granted 
that  the  work  already  done  to  preserve  and  edit  old  Irish 
Mss.  would  be  continued,  he  urged: — (1)  that  the  pieces 
of  the  finest  quality  should  be  accurately  translated  "with 
as  much  of  a  poetic  movement  as  is  compatible  with  fine 
prose,  and  done  by  men  who  have  the  love  of  noble  form 
and  the  power  of  shaping  it" ;  (2)  that  Irishmen  of  forma- 
tive genius  should  take,  one  by  one,  the  various  cycles  of 
Irish  tales,  and  grouping  each  of  them  round  one  central 
figure,  supply  to  each  a  dominant  human  interest  to 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  225 

which  every  event  in  the  whole  should  converge,  after 
the  manner  of  Malory's  'Morte  d'Arthur';  (3)  that  suit- 
able episodes  in  these  imaginative  tales  should  be  treated 
in  verse,  retaining  the  colour  and  spirit  of  the  original; 
(4)  that  the  folk-stories  of  Ireland  should  be  collected. 
Douglas  Hyde's  'Beside  the  Fire,'  which  had  appeared 
in  1890,  was  mentioned  as  exactly  the  thing  that  ought 
ta  be  done  for  the  folk-tales  of  all  Ireland,  and  it  is  pos- 
sible that  Stopford  Brooke  realized  what  Dr.  Hyde  had 
already  accomplished  "or  was  on  the  way  to  accomphsh 
— the  discovery  of  a  new  literary  idiom,  Hibernian 
English  or  Anglo-Irish,  It  is  not  the  Uteral  translation 
of  Gaelic,  but  the  adoption  of  Irish  idioms,  "of  the  kind 
used  all  over  Ireland,  the  kind  the  people  themselves 
use,"  which  rest  ultimately,  no  doubt,  upon  translation 
from  that  Irish  which  was  the  language  of  the  speaker's 
father,  grandfather,  or  great-grandfather,  and  have  per- 
petuated themselves,  "even  in  districts  where  you  will 
scarce  find  a  trace  of  an  Irish  word."  Hyde  continued 
and  successfully  developed  the  experiment  in  'Love 
Songs  of  Connacht'  (1893)  and  the  Movement  found 
itself  endowed  with  the  priceless  boon  of  a  medium  of 
expression  which  had  the  charm  of  literary  freshness  and 
the  ease  and  naturalness  of  a  spoken  tongue. 


WILLIAM    BUTLER  YEATS    (1865-         ) 

Of  the  thir3^  kind  of  work  to  be  done  on  the  Irish 
cycles — the  rendering  of  selected  episodes  in  modern 
verse — Stopford  Brooke  gave  as  one  of  the  two  best 
examples  Ke  had  seen  *  The  Wanderings  of  Oisin '  by 
William  Butler  Yeats,  a  young  and  then  little  known 
poet  who'had  been  actively  connected  with  both  the 


A 


226  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

London  and  the  Dublin  Societies.  Born  in  Dublin  of  a 
Sligo  Protestant  family  in  1865,  Yeats  had  spent  his 
childhood  and  the  most  impressionable  years  of  his  youth 
in  Ireland,  with  the  exception  of  some  five  years  in  Eng- 
land at  school.  He  had  written  poetiy  when  he  was  16 
and  began  to  publish  before  he  was  20  in  Irish  magazines 
and  newspapers.  He  was  an  ardent  patriot,  read  old 
Irish  hterature  '"in  bad  translations"  (there  were  at 
that  time  very  few  good  ones),  and  gathered  folk  lore 
from  the  lips  of  the  Connaught  peasantry  by  their  turf 
fires.  He  had  edited  '  Poems  and  Ballads  of  Young  Ire- 
land' and  'Fairy  and  Folk  Tales  of  the  Irish  Peasantry' 
in  1888,  'Stories from  Carleton'  in  1889,  and  two  volumes 
of  *  Representative  Irish  Tales'  in  1890.  The  early  poems 
included  in  'The  Wanderings  of  Oisin'  volume  (1889) 
bear  marks  of  the  influence  of  Spenser  and  Shelley,  Morris 
and  Rossetti;  several  of  them  were  suppressed,  and 
others  severely  revised  by  their  author,  who  had  already 
discovered  his  individual  bent  and  very  soon  perfected 
his  style.  He  had  dabbled  in  theosophy  with  a  wander- 
ing Brahmin  who  came  to  Dublin,  and  in  1893  completed 
a  three- volume  edition  of  Blake.  He  read  all  this  mysti- 
cal lore  into  the  peasant  tales  he  gathered,  being  "at  no 
pains  to  separate  my  own  beliefs  from  those  of  the  peas- 
antry." ('The  Celtic  Twilight,'  1893.)  Similarly  in 
his  poetry,  Yeats  found  the  way  to  express  his  mj^sticism 
by  means  of  the  mythology  which  old  Irish  literature  had 
in  common  with  the  traditional  superstitions  of  the  Irish 
peasant.  Contact  with  a  mass  of  material  so  long  unused 
for  literary  purposes  that  it  had  been  almost  forgotten 
gave  his  work  freshness  of  appeal,  his  devotion  not  merely 
to  Ireland  as  a  nation,  but  to  the  Irish  spirit  as  he  inter- 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  227 

preted  it  gave  him  sincerity  and  authority  of  utterance, 
and  his  philosophy,  though  it  was  one  of  escape  from  Ufe 
rather  than  a  resolute  attempt  to  face  its  problems  and 
agitations,  was  not  unwelcome  to  a  generation  world- 
weary  and  somewhat  oppressed  with  a  sense  of  its  own 
meaningless  materialism.  Yeats  had  a  genuine  lyrical 
gift  and  his  inspiration  was  supplemented  by  conscien- 
tious and  skilful  craftsmanship.  The  volume  of  *  Poems ' 
he  published  in  1895  estabhshed  not  merely  his  own  repu- 
tation, but  the  position  of  the  literary  movement  of 
which  he  now  became  the  protagonist,  and  won  a  hearing 
for  his  friend  and  fellow  mystic  "A.  E. "  (George  William 
Russell),  whose  'Homeward  Songs  by  the  Way'  (1894-5) 
and  'The  Earth  Breath'  (1897)  gained  wide  acceptance. 
Probably  few  of  the  English  readers  of  either  poet  paid 
much  attention  to  the  mystical  doctrine  involved  in  the 
new  mythology,  and  the  critic's  task  was  left  to  an  Irish 
transcendentalist  "John  Eglinton"  (W.  K.  Magee),  who 
in  the  columns  of  the  Dublin  'Daily  Express'  raised  a 
doubt  whether  "a  determined  pre-occupation "  with  the 
ancient  legends  of  Ireland  was  likely  to  produce  "any- 
thing but  belles  lettres  as  distinguished  from  a  national 
literature."  There  followed  a  lively  and  instructive 
controversy,  which  was  collected  under  the  title  *  Literary 
Ideals  in  Ireland '  (1899)  and  is  one  of  the  most  important 
documents  of  the  Movement.  "John  Eglinton"  dis- 
tinguished between  two  conceptions  of  the  poet,  the  first 
"as  a  seer  and  a  spiritual  force,"  the  second,  "as  an 
aristocratic  craftsman." 

"The  first  looks  to  man  himself  as  the  source  of  inspiration;  the 
second  to  tradition,  to  the  forms  and  images  in  which  old  conceptions 
have  been  embodied — old  faiths,  mjrths,  dreams.     The  weakness  of 


i( 


228  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  first  is  an  inclination  to  indifference  toward  the  form  and  comeH- 
ness  of  art,  as  in  Whitman;  while  the  second,  if  it  hold  aloof  from  the 
first,  cuts  itself  asunder  from  the  soiurce  of  all  regeneration  in  art. 
The  bias  of  the  first  is  toward  naked  statement,  hard  fact,  dogmatism; 
the  bias  of  the  second  toward  theory,  diffuseness,  insincerity.  The 
latter  appears  to  me  to  be  the  bias  of  belles  lettres  at  present.  The 
f)oet  looks  too  much  away  from  himself  and  from  his  age,  does  not 
feel  the  facts  of  life  enough,  but  seeks  in  art  an  escape  from  them. 
Consequently,  the  art  he  achieves  cannot  be  the  expression  of  the 
age  and  of  himself — cannot  be  representative  or  national." 

The  attack  was  direct  and  was  driven  home.  Yeats 
met  it  with  an  answer  no  less  outspoken:  — 

"I  believe  that  the  renewal  of  belief,  which  is  the  great  movement 
of  our  time,  will  more  and  more  liberate  the  arts  from  '  their  age '  and 
from  life,  and  leave  them  more  and  more  free  to  lose  themselves  in 
beauty,  and  to  busy  themselves,  like  all  the  great  poetry  of  the  past 
and  like  religions  of  all  times,  with  'old  faiths,  myths,  dreams,'  the 
accumulated  beauty  of  the  age.  I  believe  that  all  men  will  more  and 
more  reject  the  opinion  that  poetry  is  'a  criticism  of  life,'  and  be 
more  and  more  convinced  that  it  is  a  revelation  of  a  hidden  life." 

After  this,  the  issue  seemed  lij^ely  to  be  lost  in  the  sound 
and  fury  of  battle,  but  "A.  E."  intervened  to  recall  both 
combatants  to  a  recollection'of  the  subject  and  to  offer  a 
reconciUng  view.  The  Old  Irish  legends,  he  urged,  have 
gained  rather  than  lost  by  the  lapse  of  time. 

"They  have  crept  through  veil  after  veil  of  the  manifold  nature  of 
man,  and  now  each  dream,  heroism,  or  beauty  has  laid  itself  nigh 
the  divine  power  it  represents,  the  suggestion  of  which  made  it  first 
beloved;  and  they  are  ready  for  the  use  of  the  spirit,  a  speech  of 
which  every  word  has  a  significance  beyond  itself,  and  Deidre  is  like 
Helen,  a  symbol  of  eternal  beauty,  and  Cuculain  represents  as  much 
as  Prometheus  the  heroic  spirit,  the  redeemer  in  man." 

Yeats,  in  an  essay  on  'The  Literary  Movement  in  Ire- 
land' written  about  the  same  time,  although  not  pub- 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  229 

lished  till  1901  (in  a  volume  edited  by  Lady  Gregory, 
entitled  'Ideals  in  Ireland')  took  much  the  same  Une  of 
defence : — 

"Irish  literature  may  prolong  its  first  inspiratior  without  renounc- 
ing the  complexity  of  ideas  and  emotions  which  is  the  inheritance  of 
cultivated  men,  for  it  will  have  learned  from  the  discoveries  of  modern 
learning  that  the  common  people,  wherever  civilization  has  not  driven 
its  plough  too  deep,  keep  a  watch  over  the  roots  of  all  reUgion  and  all 
romance.  Their  poetry  trembles  upon  the  verge  of  incoherence  with 
a  passion  all  but  imknown  among  modern  poets,  and  their  sense  of 
beauty  exhausts  itself  in  countless  legends  and  in  metaphors  that 
seem  to  mirror  the  energies  of  nature.     .     .     . 

"It  may  be  that  poetry  is  the  utterance  of  desires  that  we  can 
only  satisfy  in  dreams,  and  that  if  all  our  dreams  were  satisfied  there 
would  be  no  more  poetry.  Dreams  pass  from  us  in  childhood,  be- 
cause we  are  so  often  told  they  can  never  come  true,  and  because  we 
are  taught  with  so  much  labotu*  to  admire  the  paler  beauty  of  the 
world.  The  children  of  the  poor  and  simple  learn  from  their  im- 
broken  religious  faith,  and  from  their  traditional  beliefs,  that  this 
world  is  nothing,  and  that  a  spiritual  world,  where  all  dreams  come 
true,  is  everything;  and  therefore  the  poor  and  simple  are  that  im- 
perfection whose  perfection  is  genixis." 

"A.  E."  later  defended  himself  and  Yeats  against 
these  and  other  attacks,  in  a  spirited  poem  *  On  behalf 
of  some  Irishmen  not  followers  of  tradition.'  It  is  not 
the  historic  Ireland  that  claims  the  allegiance  of  the  new 
school,  but  "the  Ireland  in  the  heart,"  the  ideal  of  the 
far  past  and  of  the  future;  their  fealty  is  "to  unseen  kings 
or  unimaginable  hght."  So  in  a  prose  passage  no  less 
eloquent  he  says: — 

"During  all  these  centuries  the  Celt  has  kept  in  his  heart  some 
affinity  with  the  mighty  beings  ruling  in  the  unseen,  once  so  evident 
to  the  heroic  races  who  preceded  him.  His  legends  and  fairy  tales 
have  connected  his  soul  with  the  inner  lives  of  air  and  water  and 
earth,  and  they  in  turn  have  kept  his  heart  sweet  with  hidden  influ- 


230  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

ence.  ...  So  this  Isle,  once  called  the  Sacred  Isle  and  also  the 
Isle  of  Destiny,  may  find  a  destiny  worthy  of  fulfilment;  not  to  be  a 
petty  peasant  republic,  nor  a  miniature  duplicate  in  life  and  aims  of 
great  material  empires,  but  that  its  children  out  of  their  faith,  which 
has  never  failed,  may  realize  this  immemorial  truth  of  man's  inmost 
divinity,  and  in  expressing  it  may  ray  their  light  over  every  land." 

It  was  perhaps  unfortunate  for  Yeats's  lyric  fame  that 
in  'The  Wind  among  the  Reeds'  (1899)  he  passed  under 
the  influence  of  the  French  Symbolist  School,  and  came 
to  use  the  heroes  of  Irish  mythology  "more  as  principles 
of  the  mind  than  as  actual  personages."  Thus  Hanrahan 
is  "fire  blown  by  the  wind,"  and  Aedh  "fire  burning  by 
itself." 

"To  put  it  in  a  different  way,  Hanrahan  is  the  simplicity  of  an 
imagination  too  changeable  to  gather  permanent  possessions,  or  the 
adoration  of  the  shepherds;  and  Michael  Robartes  is  the  pride  of  the 
imagination  brooding  upon  the  greatness  of  its  possessions,  or  the 
adoration  of  the  Magi;  while  Aedh  is  the  myrrh  and  frankincense 
that  the  imagination  offers  continually  before  all  that  it  loves." 

Later  he  adopted  a  mode  of  thought  and  a  style,  which, 
if  not  simpler,  were  at  any  rate  more  austere.  By  way 
of  contrast  the  following  lines  from  'The  Green  Helmet' 
addressed  '  To  a  Poet,  who  would  have  me  praise  certain 
bad  poets.  Imitators  of  his  and  mine,'  may  serve: — 

"You  say,  as  I  have  often  given  tongue 
In  praise  of  what  another's  said  or  sung, 
'Twere  politic  to  do  the  like  by  these; 
But  have  you  known  a  dog  to  praise  his  fleas?" 

At  the  end  of  '  Responsibihties '  (1916)  he  seems  to 
take  leave  of  Celtic  mythology  in  'A  Coat': — 
"I  made  my  song  a  coat 
Covered  with  embroideries 
Out  of  old  mythologies 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  231 

From  heel  to  throat; 
But  the  fools  caught  it, 
Wore  it  in  the  world's  eye 
As  though  they'd  wrought  it. 
Song,  let  them  take  it 
For  there's  more  enterprise 
In  walking  naked." 

A  song  of  farewell  to  Major  Robert  Gregory,  Lionel 
Johnson,  Synge  and  other  Irish  friends,  published  in  the 
August  number  (1918)  of  'The  New  Review/  illustrates 
what  T.  S^^urge  Moore  in  the  same  issue  says  of  Yeats's 
most  recent  style  of  versification : 

"  Mr.  Yeats  has  of  late  years  set  the  fashion  of  skating  across  ever 
thinner  ice  until  it  seems  almost  miraculous  that  verse  is  not  prose. 
You  watch  the  skater  as  the  surface  warps  under  his  swift  passage, 
and  expect  that  another  minute  he  will  be  in  it,  floimdering  like  any 
Walt  Whitman,  but  this  does  not  happen.  Rhyme  is  not  discarded, 
but  strained;  rhythms  are  not  free,  but  licentioiisT""      "'^ 

JOHN   MILLINGTON  SYNGE   (1871-1909) 

Even  in  his  early  publications,  Yeats  had  shown  some        I 
inclination    towards    the    dramatic    form,    though    his         i 
"dramatic"  poems  of  the  eighties  are  in  reality  lyric.         ' 
'The  Countess  Cathleen,'  in  the  form  in  which  it  was        | 
originally  published  in  1892,  falls  into  the  same  category, 
and  two  years  later  W.  P.  Ryan  could  say  without  offence : 
— "As  the  Irish  revival  expands  in  new  directions,  will 
not  some  one  take  heart  and  attempt  something  for  Irish 
dramatic  literature?     The  real  Irish  drama  is  a  thing 
unknown."     Yeats's  short  lyric  drama  'The  Land  of 
Heart's  Desire '  was  produced  at  the  Avenue  Theatre  in 
London  the  same  year  (1894)  and  had  no  great  success, 
but  he  did  not  relinquish  his  dream  of  an  Irish  literary 


232  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

theatre,  and  in  1898,  in  talk  with  Lady  Gregory,  the 
project  took  definite  shape.  Their  first  plans  were 
simple  and  modest — the  performance  by  Enghsh  actors 
of  Yeats's  'The  Countess  Cathleen'  and  of  Edward 
Martyn's  'The  Heather  Field'  at  the  Antient  Concert 
Rooms,  Dublin,  on  May  8  and  9,  1899.  George  Moore, 
who  had  looked  after  the  rehearsals  in  England,  has  given 
in  '  Ave '  an  amusing  account  of  the  performance  of  '  The 
Countess  Cathleen,'  which  met  with  a  hostile  reception 
on  account  of  supposed  heretical  implications,  but  the 
success  of  the  venture  was  sufficient  to  secure  the  repeti- 
tion of  the  experiment  in  February,  1900,  when  'The 
Bending  of  the  Bough'  by  George  Moore,  'The  Last 
Feast  of  the  Fianna'  by  AHce  Milhgan,  and  'Maeve'  by 
Edward  Martyn  were  given,  and  in  October,  1901,  when 
'Diarmuid  and  Grania'  by  W.  B.  Yeats  and  George 
Moore  was  presented  by  English  actors,  and  '  The  Twist- 
ing of  the  Rope '  by  Douglas  Hyde  in  Gaehc  by  an  Irish 
company.  It  was  during  the  rehearsals  of  the  Gaehc 
play  that  the  brothers  Fay  conceived  the  idea  of  an  Irish 
amateur  company  for  plays  in  Enghsh,  encouraged 
thereto  by  the  enterprise  of  Ole  Bull  at  the  Norwegian 
National  Theatre.  Accordingly,  in  April,  1902,  the 
Irish  National  Dramatic  Company  produced  'Deirdre' 
by  "A.  E."  and  'Cathleen  ni  Houlihan,'  a  short  play 
symbolic  of  Irish  patriotism,  by  W.  B.  Yeats.  Other 
plays  followed,  and  in  1903  under  the  presidency  of 
W.  B.  Yeats  the  ^rish  National  Theatre  Society  was 
formed.  The  production  of  'In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen' 
on  October  8th,  1903,  marks  the  accession  of  a  new 
creative  force,  J.  M.  Synge,  who  had  been  discovered  by 
Yeats  at  Paris  in  1899,  and  sent  to  the  Aran  Islands  in 

T 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  233 

search  of  native  material  and  a  native  style.  Ernest  A. 
Boyd  in  his  'Ireland's  Literary  Renaissance^ jvell "says 
that  the  great  "event",  in  the  history  of  the  Irish  theatre 
was  '^the  discovery  and  universal  recognition  of  the 
genius  of  J,  M.  Synge."  The  timely  help  of  Miss  Horni- 
man,  "who  restored  and  endowed  the  Abbey  Theatre  for 
the  Company,  secured  the  necessary  material  opportu- 
nity, but  what  really  won  the  attention  of  the  English- 
speaking  world  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  was  the 
dramatic  power  of  Synge's  plays,  aided  no  doubt  by  the 
simphcity  and  naturalness  of  the  gestures  and  speech  of 
the  actors,  and  the  quiet  appropriateness  of  costumes 
and  scenery.  When  Yeats,  with  Lady  Gregory's  help, 
had  projected  the  Irish  Literary  Theatre  in  1899,  he  had 
called  for  plays  "that  will  make  the  theatre  a  place  of  in- 
tellectual excitement,"  and  had  added: — "Such  plays 
will  require,  both  in  writers  and  audiences,  a  stronger 
feeling  for  beautiful  and  appropriate  language  than  one 
finds  in  the  ordinary  theatre."  Synge's  plays  satisfied 
both  demands,  but  not  in  the  way  that  Yeats  expected, 
for  it  is  evident  that  what  the  latter  had  in  mind  was 
lyric  drama,  though  his  one  permanently  successful  play 
on  the  stage,  'Cathleen  ni  Houlihan,'  is  in  prose.  Synge 
found  the  heroes  and  fairies  of  Old  Irish  legend  "too  far 
away  from  life  to  appease  his  mood,"  as  Yeats  puts  it, 
and  he  forsook  "sweet  Angus,  Maeve  and  Fand"  for  the 
poachers  and  topers  of  the  countryside.  The  plot  of  'In 
the  Shadow  of  the  Glen'  Synge  took  from  a  story  he 
picked  up  during  his  wanderings  in  Aran  from  old  "Pat 
Dirane,"  just  as  he  took  the  story  of  'The  Tinker's  Wed- 
ding' from  a  herd  he  met  at  a  Wicklow  fair.  Whence  did 
he  gain  the  "beautiful  and  appropriate"  language,  which 


234  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Yeats  prescribed,  and  which  forms  one  of  the  great  charms 
of  Synge's  plays?  The  discovery  of  the  Anglo-Irish  idiom 
is  rightly  ascribed  to  Douglas  Hyde,  with  whose  'Love 
Songs  of  Connacht '  Synge  was  well  acquainted;  indeed  he 
borrows  from  it  a  phrase  or  two.  Synge  also  acknowl- 
edges indebtedness  to  Lady  Gregory's  'Cuchulain  of 
Muirthemne,'  a  rendering  of  Irish  legends  in  the  Anglo- 
Irish  of  Kiltartan,  which  was  published  the  year  before  his 
first  play  was  produced,  and  which  he  had  doubtless  seen 
before  it  was  printed.  But  both  Dr.  Hyde  and  Lady 
Gregory  drew  from  a  common  source — the  spoken  lan- 
guage of  the  Irish  peasant — with  which  Synge  himself  was 
in  direct  contact.     He  says  in  the  preface  to  *  The  Playboy 

1 1     of  the  Western  World'  that  in  all  his  plays  he  ^sedtwily 
one'^br  two  words  he  had  not  heard  among  the  country 

,  *  i   people  of  Ireland. 

"When  I  was  writing  'The  Shadow  of  the  Glen,'  some  years  ago, 
I  got  more  aid  than  any  learning  could  have  given  me,  from  a  chink 
in  the  floor  of  the  old  Wicklow  house  where  I  was  staying,  that  let  me 
hear  what  was  being  said  by  the  servant  girls  in  the  kitchen.  This 
matter,  I  think,  is  of  importance,  for  in  countries  where  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  people,  and  the  language  they  use,  is  rich  and  living,  it  is 
possible  for  a  writer  to  be  rich  and  copious  in  his  words,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  give  the  reality,  which  is  the  root  of  all  poetry,  in  a  com- 
prehensive and  natural  form." 

In  another  passage  Synge  speaks  of  his  achievement  of 
striking  and  beautiful  phrases  as  a  collaboration  with  the 
Irish  peasantry ;  and  so  noTdoubt  it  was,  but  it  was  a  col- 
laboration in  which  his  genius  was  predominant.  In 
Dr.  Hyde  or  Lady  Gregory  one  gets  an  occasional  poetic 
phrase  or  alluring  turn  of  Gaelicized  syntax;  but  no  one 
except  Synge  (and  besides  these  two  predecessors  he  has 
had  nimerous  followers)  has  been  able  to  use  the  Anglo- 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  235 

Irish  idiom  so  that  (to  use  his  own  phrase)  "every  speech 
should  be  as  fully  flavoured  as  a  nut  or  apple,"  The 
discovery  of  the  idiom  was  no  doubt  a  lucky  chance  for 
Synge,  who  was  acquainted  not  only  with  Anglo-Irish 
but  with  Gaelic;  but  the  power  to  use  it  was  his  own, 
partly  natural  gift,  but  cultivated  by  his  long  studies  of 
French  literature  and  his  years  of  residence  in  Paris.  He 
came  of  an  old  Anglo-Irish  family  and  was  educated  at 
Trinity  College,  but  it  was  neither  from  Protestant  nor 
from  Catholic  Ireland,  but  from  modern  France  that  he 
won  his  attitude  of  ironical  detachment,  which  was  so 
alien  to  Irish  sentiment  that  his  plays  repeatedly  aroused 
violent  protest  in  Dublin  and  elsewhere.  In  'The 
Shadow  of  the  Glen,'  Synge  cancels  the  ending  of  the  old 
folk  tale  in  which  the  faithless  wife  and  her  lover  meet 
condign  punishment,  and  allows  his  heroine  to  go  off  by 
her  own  choice  with  the  tramp,  while  her  husband  sits 
down  to  drink  with  the  man  who  a  few  minutes  before 
was  ready  to  fill  his  shoes.  The  Cathohc  Churcn,  which 
has  so  strong  a  hold  on  the  affections  of  the  Irish  peas- 
antry, furnishes  Synge  with  dramatic  machinery,  as  in 
*  The  Well  of  the  Saints, '  or  with  opportunity  for  frank 
ridicule,  as  in  'The  Tinker's  Wedding.'  As  to  the  latter 
play,  Synge  said: — 

"  In  the  greater  part  of  Ireland  the  whole  people,  from  the  tinkers 
to  the  clergy,  have  still  a  life,  and  view  of  life,  that  are  rich  and  genial 
and  humorous.  I  do  not  think  that  these  country  people,  who  have 
so  much  humour  themselves,  will  mind  being  laughed  at  without 
malice,  as  the  people  in  every  coimtry  have  been  laughed  at  in  their 
own  comedies." 

So  far  as  'The  Tinker's  Wedding'  is  concerned,  the 
directors  of  the  Abbey  Theatre  have  not  ventured  to  put 


236  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Synge's  high  estimate  of  the  tolerant  humour  of  the  Irish 
public  to  the  test,  and  in  view  of  the  stormy  reception 
given  to  'The  Playboy  of  the  Western  World,'  they  were 
well-advised  in  not  running  the  risk.  Except  in  that 
gem  of  sheer  pathos,  'The  Riders  to  the  Sea,'  it  musFbe 
confessed  that  Synge's  picture  of  the  Irish  peasantry  is 
neither  complimentary  nor  sympathetic.  It  has  humour ; 
it  answers  Synge's  own  test  of  giving  "the  nourishment, 
not  very  easy  to  define,  on  which  our  imaginations  live"; 
his  "drama,  hke  the  symphony,  does  not  teach  or  prove 
anything."  It  appeals,  not  to  an3^  sense  of  nationality, 
but  to  our  sense  of  humanity  and  our  sense  of  beauty. 
If  it  is  regarded  from  a  narrower  point  of  view,  the  judg- 
ment passed  on  it  in  a  recently  recorded  conversation 
between  two  Irishmen  is  not  wholly  unjustified: — 

'"They  do  be  putting  quare  plays  on  in  Dublin  nowadays!' 

I  replied,  'Ah!'  with  encouraging  intimation. 

'Yes!'  he  continued,  'very  queer  plays.  They  do  be  putting  on 
plays  where  a  boy  from  the  country  kills  his  da!' 

'That  seems  wrong.' 

'Yes.  And  they  make  us  out  to  be  nothing  but  cut-throats,  and 
murderers,  and  dijinirates. ' 

'What  on  earth  do  they  mean  by  doing  that?' 

'They  calls  it— Art.'" 

It  is  art,  and  art  of  a  very  rare  and  fine  quality;  but 
whether  one  may  reasonably  expect  the  Irish  peasantry 
to  be  proud  to  be  the  vehicle  of  it,  is  an  open  question. 
It  seems  a  good  deal  to  expect  from  them  a  higher  degree 
of  tolerant  intelligence  than  the  townspeople  of  Tarascon 
gave  to  Daudet,  or  the  inhabitants  of  the  Five  Towns  to 
Arnold  Bennett. 

Whether  or  no  the  Irish  peasant  should  be  grateful  to 
Synge,  Synge's  literary  reputation  is  under  deep  indebted- 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  237 

ness  to  the  Irish  peasant,  who  gave  him  not  merely  an 
idiom  he  could  turn  to  beauty,  but  a  way  of  thinking  he 
could  turn  to  dramatic  effect.  The  idiom  proved  much 
less  effective  in  '  Deirdre,'  and  the  way  of  thinking,  which 
remains  much  the  same,  seems  less  suited  to  an  age  of 
primitive  romance,  far  removed  in  time,  than  to  the 
primitive  moderns,  sufficiently  removed  in  space  to  allow 
the  imagination  play,  but  endowed  with  actuality  by 
Synge's  realistic  genius.  Whether  he  would  have  suc- 
ceeded with  the  eighteenth  century  drama  he  was  medi- 
tating at  his  untimely  death,  can  only  be  conjectured. 
His  Irish  peasant  drama  remains  a  unique  achievement, 
for  though  there  are  other  plays  written  for  the  Abbey 
Theatre  which  have  literary  interest  or  achieved  popular 
success,  no  others  seem  likely  to  win  for  themselves  the 
abiding  place  in  literary  history  to  which  Synge's  work 
is  clearly  entitled. 

GEORGE  MOORE  (1862-        ) 

George  Moore  was  in  the  Irish  movement,  but  he  was 
never  really  of  it.  Born  in  County  Mayo  in  1852,  he  had 
passed  most  of  his  youth  and  early  manhood  in  Paris  and 
London,  and  before  the  Movement  really  began,  he  had 
estabhshed  his  place  in  hterature  by  his  book  on  'Mod- 
ern Painting'  and  his  reaUstic  novel  'Esther  Waters.' 
It  was  when  he  was  engaged  on  these  w6r!ts"in  1894 
that  Edward  Martyn  said  to  him: — "I  wish  I  knew 
enough  Irish  to  write  my  plays  in  Irish,"  and  he  replied, 
"I  thought  nobody  did  anything  in  Irish  except  bring 
turf  from  the  bog  and  say  prayers."  Then  he  learnt  that 
a  new  literature  was  springing  up  in  Irish,  and  he  thought 
what  a  wonderful  thing  it  would  be  to  write  a  book  in  a 


1 


/ 


238  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

new  language  or  in  an  old  language  revived  and  sharpened 
to  literary  usage  for  the  first  time.  Five  years  later, 
Yeats  and  Martyn  came  to  Moore  to  interest  him  in  the 
project  of  an  Irish  Literary  Theatre  in  Dublin,  and  going 
to  Ireland  at  their  invitation  he  yielded  to  the  fatal 
charms  of  Cathleen  ni  Houlihan.  This,  at  least,  is  one 
of  the  explanations  he  gives,  for  there  are  many  to  choose 
from.  "The  Englishman  that  was  in  me  (he  that  wrote 
'Esther  Waters'),  had  been  overtaken  and  captured  by 
the  Irishman."  After  the  Boer  war,  he  turned  from  Eng- 
land in  horror;  "it  became  so  beastly."  Also  there  was 
"Stella,"  who,  after  receiving  two  telegrams  asking  her 
to"7;ome,  two  telling  her  not  to  come,  and  the  last  one 
just  in  time,  met  him  on  the  boat.  At  Lady  Gregory's 
house  he  undertook  to  write  'Diarmuid  and  Grania' 
with  Yeats,  who  took  him  aback  to  begin  with  by  re- 
marking that  "the  first  act  of  every  good  play  is  hori- 
zontal, the  second  perpendicular."  "And  the  third,  I 
suppose,  circular?"  Moore  retorted,  and  Yeats  agreed. 
He  agreed  also  with  Moore's  casual  suggestion  that  he 
preferred  to  write  the  play  in  French  rather  than  in 
Yeats's  vocabulary.  "Lady  Gregory  will  translate  your 
text  into  English.  Taidgh  O'Donohue  will  translate  the 
Enghsh  text  into  Irish,  and  Lady  Gregory  will  translate 
the  Irish  text  back  into  English."  Moore  gives  us  in 
*  Ave '  the  French  text  of  the  first  scene  of  the  second  act 
as  the  only  way  of  convincing  the  reader  "that  two  such 
literary  lunatics  as  Yeats  and  myself  existed,  contem- 
poraneously, and  in  Ireland,  too,  a  country  not  distin- 
guished for  its  love  of  letters."  Moore  left  Ireland  for 
France,  as  a  French  atmosphere  was  necessary  for  French 
composition,  and  returned  home  to  England,  but  a  divine 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  239 

revelation  convinced  him  that  "the  Messiah  Ireland  was 
waiting  for  was  in  me  and  not  in  another."  He  had  some 
difficulty  in  convincing  "A.  E.,"  who  was  experienced  in 
such  matters,  of  the  genuineness  of  the  vision,  but  he 
stuck  to  it,  and  made  the  acquaintance  of  all  the  leading 
figures  in  the  Irish  Movement.  Familiarity  brought 
him  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Irish  Renaissance  was 
"but  a  bubble,"  but  he  had  a  second  revelation — "that 
no  Gg,tholic  had  written  a  book  worth  reading  since  the 
Reformation,"  Born  into  a  Catholic  family  and  still 
an  agnostic,  he  determined  to  become  a  Protestant,  to 
the  no  small  embarrassment  of  the  Church  of  Ireland 
clei^.  "  My  belief  never  faltered  that  I  was  an  instru- 
ment in  the  hands  of  the  gods,  and  that  their  mighty 
purpose  was  the  liberation  of  my  country  from  priest- 
craft." He  knew  he  was  not  a  preacher,  and  strove  to 
fashion  first  a  story,  then  a  play,  but  "the  artist  in  me 
could  not  be  suborned."  Davitt  came  with  a  project 
for  a  newspaper,  but  he  died.""  Moore  was  beginning  to 
lose  hope  when  the  form  which  the  book  should  take  was 
revealed  to  him — an  autobiography — an  unusual  form 
for  a  sacred  book  he  reflected,  until  the  example  of  St. 
Paul  occurred  to  him.  I 

This  is  Moore's  own  account  of  '  Hail  and  Farewell ' —  f 
the  three  volumes  in  which  he  said  '^Ave,'  'Salve,'  and 
'Vale'  to  Ireland  and  the  Irish  Movement.  The  Ren- 
aissance was  well  provided  with  fairies  of  the  serious 
sort,  but  had  no  knavish  elves,  and  Moore  took  upon 
himself  the  part  of  Puck  in  the  disguise  of  a  literary  his- 
torian. It  is  the  most  entertaining  account  of  the  Irish 
Renaissance,  and  would  be  the  most  authoritative  if  one 
could  only  believe  half  of  what  is  told.     But  when  Moore 


II 


( 


240  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

ascribes  to  Edward  Martyn  the  remark  to  himself:  "I 
never  beUeved  that  your  life  is  anything  but  pure;  it  is 
only  your  mind  that  is  indecent/'  we  detect  invention,  as 
in  the  definition  put  in  the  mouth  of  '^A.  E.": — "A  liter- 
ary movement  consists  of  five  or  six  people,  who  live  in 
the  same  town  and  hate  each  other  cordially."  It  was  a 
good  thing  that  Mpore  said  "Farewell"  to  Ireland  in  the 
last  volume,  for  he  could  certainly  not  have  returned  to 
I  it,  and  it  is  a  wonder  that  the  British  Isles  remained  large 
enough  to  contain  himself  and  the  victims  of  his  malicious 
wit.  '  Hail  and  Farewell '  is  and  is  likely  to  be  a  unique 
literary  achievement,  for  the  combination  of  impish  skill 
and  thorough-going  disregard  of  the  feelings  of  one's 
most  intimate  literary  associates  and  friends  is  fortu- 
nately rare. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

WILLIAM  BUTLER  YEATS 
Poems 
1886     'Mosada.'    A  Dramatic  Poem. 
1889     'The  Wanderings  of  Oisin,  and  other  Poems.' 
1895     'Poems'    (including  L3Tics  published  with   'The  Countess 
Cathleen'  (1892). 

1899  '  The  Wind  among  the  Reeds.' 

1906  'Poems,  1899-1905.' 

1914  'Responsibilities.' 

1917  'The  Wild  Swans  at  Coole,  other  Verses  and  a  Play  in  Verse' 

('At  the  Hawk's  Well,'  a  "Noh"  play,  performed  privately 
in  1916  by  the  Japanese  dancer  Ito  and  others). 

Plays 

1892  'The  Countess  Cathleen'  (acted  1899). 
1894     'The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire.' 

1900  'The  Shadowy  Waters'  (acted  1904). 

1902  'Cathleen  ni  Houlihan.' 

1903  'The  Hour  Glass.' 

'On  Baile's  Strand'  (acted  1904). 

1904  'The  King's  Threshold'  (acted  1903). 
'The  Pot  of  Broth'  (acted  1902). 

1907  'Deirdre'  (acted  1906). 

1910  'The  Green  Hehnet.' 

1911  'Plays  for  an  Irish  Theatre,'  containing  all  the  above  except 

the  first  two. 

Pbosb 

1893  'The  Celtic  Twihght.' 
1897     'The  Secret  Rose.' 

1903  '  Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil." 

1907  'Discoveries;  A  Volume  of  Essays.' 

1912  '  The  Cutting  of  an  Agate.' 

1915  'Reveries  over  Childhood  and  Youth.' 

1918  'Per  Amica  Silentia  Lunae.' 

1908  'Collected  Works— 8  Vols.' 
17  241 


242  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

-  "A.  E."   (GEORGE  W.  RUSSELL) 

1894  'Homeward;  Songs  by  the  Way.' 

1897  'The  Earth  Breath.' 

1906  'By  StiU  Waters.' 

1907  'Deirdre.' 

1913  'CoUected  Poems.' 

1915     'Gods  of  War  and  other  Poems.' 

'  Imaginations  and  Reveries.' 
1917     'Salutation;  a  Poem  on  the  Irish  Rebellion  of  1916.' 

JOHN  MILLINGTON  SYNGE 

1905     'In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen'  (acted  1903). 

'Riders  to  the  Sea'  (acted  1904). 
1907     ' The  Well  of  the  Saints.' 

'The  Playboy  of  the  Western  World.' 

'The  Tinker's  Wedding.' 
1910     'Deirdre  of  the  Sorrows.' 

All  the  above  are  included  in  the  four  volumes  of  Synge's  Works 
(1911)  in  which  appeared  also  'The  Aran  Islands'  (1907)  and  'Poems 
and  Translations'  (1909),  and  in  the  one  volume  edition  of  his 
'Dramatic  Works'  (1915). 

GEORGE  MOORE 

1878  'Flowers  of  Passion.' 

1881  'Pagan  Poems.' 

1883  'A  Modern  Lover.' 

*    1885  'A  Mummer's  Wife.' 

*^  1886  'A  Drama  in  Muslin.' 

^    1888  '  Confessions  of  a  Yoimg  Man.' 

*^  1893  'Modern  Painting.' 

^'  1894  'Esther  Waters.' 

/■  1898  'Evelyn  Innes.' 

*-"  1900  'The  Bending  of  the  Bough.' 

"^  1901  'Sister  Teresa.' 

^  1903  'The  UntiUed  Field.' 

^1911  'Ave.' 

■   1912  'Salve.' 

1914  'Vale.' 

-    1916    'The  Brook  Kerith.' 


y 


THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT  243 

BIOGRAPHICAL,  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL 

Francis  Bickley,  'John  Millington  Synge  and  the  Irish  Dramatic 

Movement,'  1912. 
Jethro  BitheU,  'W.  B.  Yeats,'  Paris,  1913. 
Maiu-ice  Bourgeois,  *J.  M.  Synge  and  the  Irish  Theatre,'  1913. 
Ernest  A.  Boyd,  '  Ireland's  Literary  Renaissance,'  1916. 
Ernest  A.  Boyd,  'The  Contemporary  Drama  of  Ireland,'  1917. 
Stopford  Brooke,  'The  Need  and  Use  of  Getting  Irish  Literatiu-e 

into  the  English  Tongue,'  1893. 
Ohver  Elton,  'The  Irish  Literary  Movement'  in  'Modem  Studies,' 

1907. 
Darrell  Figgis,  'A.  E.,'  1915. 
Lady  Gregory  (Ed.),  'Ideals  in  Ireland,'  1901. 
Lady  Gregory,  'Our  Irish  Theatre,'  1914. 
Patty  Giu-d,  'The  Early  Poetry  of  WiUiam  Butler  Yeats,'  Lancaster, 

Pa.,  1916. 
J.  M.  Hone,  'W.  B.  Yeats,'  1916. 
P.  P.  Howe,  '  J.  M.  Synge,  A  Critical  Study,'  1912. 
Douglas  Hyde,  'Beside  the  Fire,'  1890. 
Douglas  Hyde,  'The  Necessity  of  De- Anglicising  the  Irish  Nation,' 

Lecture  at  the  Dublin  National  Literary  Society,  Nov.  25, 1892. 
Douglas  Hyde,  'A  Literary  History  of  Ireland,'  1899. 
Douglas  Hyde,  'Love  Songs  of  Connacht,'  1893. 
"JohnEglinton,"  W.  B.  Yeats,  "A.  E."  and  W.  Larminie,  'Literary 

Ideals  in  Ireland,'  1899. 
Horatio  Sheaf e  Krans,  'Wm.  Butler  Yeats  and  the  Irish  Literary 

Revival,'  1904. 
John  Masefield,  'Recollections  of  J.  M.  Synge,'  1915. 
Susan  L.  Mitchell,  'George  Moore,'  1916. 
David  James  O'Donohue,  'The  Poets  of  Ireland,  A  Biographical  and 

Bibliographical  Dictionary,'  1912. 
Forrest  Reid,  'W.  B.  Yeats,  A  Critical  Study,'  1915. 
William  P.  Ryan,  'The  Irish  Literary  Revival;  its  History,  Pioneers, 

and  Possibilities,'   1894. 
Cornelius  Weygandt,  'Irish  Plays  and  Playwrights,'  1913. 
W.  B.  Yeats,  'The  Celtic  TwiUght,'  1893. 
W.  B.  Yeats, '  Synge  and  the  Ireland  of  his  Time,'  1911. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  NEW  POETS 

The  new  generation  which  learned  to  scoff  at  the  Vic- 
torians produced  no  poet,  who  either  by  the  quahty  or 
the  mass  of  his  work  claimed  comparison  with  any  one 
of  the  great  trinity  of  the  later  nineteenth  century — 
Tennyson,  Browning  and  Swinburne.  William  Archer, 
in  the  introduction  to  his  survey  of  the  '  Poets  of  the 
Younger  Generation'  (1902),  remarked  a  "general  tend- 
ency among  cultivated  people,  to  assume  that  EngUsh 
poetry  has  of  late  entered  on  a  temporary  or  permanent 
period  of  decadence,"  and  he  was  so  far  from  denying 
this  assumption  that  all  he  claimed  for  the  thirty  odd 
writers  included  in  his  review  was  that  they  were  all 
"true  poets,  however  small  may  be  the  bulk  of  their 
work,  however  unequal  its  merit."  Whether  they  were 
major  or  minor  poets  he  left  to  the  judgment  of  posterity; 
and  posterity  so  far  has  not  ventured  to  promote  any  one 
of  the  33  to  first  poetic  rank,  though  (among  those  who 
have  died  since)  the  work  of  John^Davidson  (1857-1909) 
and  Francis  Thompson  (1859-1907)  has  stood  the  test  of 
time.  The  fact  that  the  lives  of  both  were  made  miser- 
able by  poverty  as  well  as  ill-health  indicates  a  lack  of 
appreciation  by  the  contemporary  public,  which  did  not 
find  either  Davidson's  scientific  materialism  or  Thomp- 
son's imaginative  mysticism  to  its  taste ;  but  the  former's 
'Fleet  Street  Eclogues'  (1893  and  1896)  and  'Ballads' 
(1894,"  1897,  and  1899)  were  in  their  own  way  as  genuine 
'■— -  244  "■ 


245 

to  English  poetry  as  Thompson's  'The  Hound 
(1893) , '  Sister  Songs '  (1895)  and  '  New  Poems ' 
(1897),  which  had  their  own  httle  band  of  convinced  and 
enthusiastic  admirers. 

But  it  was  not  until  the  new  century  was  well-advanced 
that  a  more  hopeful  and  appreciative  spirit  was  to  be 
remarked.  When  the  little  collection  entitled  'Georgian 
Poetry  1911-12'  was  issued  in  the  latter  year,"  it  was 
"in  the  belief  that  Enghsh  poetry  is  now  once  again  put- 
ting on  a  new  strength  and  beauty,  and  that  we  are  at 
the  beginning  of  another  'Georgian  period'  which  may 
take  rank  In  due  time  with  the  several  great  poetic  ages 
of  the  past."  The  modest  enterprise  met  with  a  cordial 
reception  from  the  public,  and  was  followed  by  two  other 
volumes,  'Georgian  Poetry  1913-15'  and  'Georgian 
Poetry  1916-17,"*  not  perhaps  quite  equal  to  the  first 
endeavour,  either  in  merit  or  in  the  impression  made  on 
the  public,  but  going  far  to  sustain  the  spirit  of  hopeful- 
ness the  first  volume  had  engendered.  Professor  Gilbert 
Murray,  in  the  preface  to  a  similar  collection,  ^Oxford 
Poetry  1910-13'  (which  also  had  successors  iij  1914, 
1915,  1916,  1917  and  1918)  spoke  (in  September,  1913) 
of  the  "feeling  of  vivid  expectancy  which  the  Georgian 
volume  raised  in  many  lovers  of  EngUsh  verse."  This 
feeling  was  wide-spread,  and  it  received  further  encour- 
agement from  'New  Numbers'  (1914)  by  Wilfrid  Wilson 
Gibson,  Rupert  BrooBe,  Lascelles  Abercrombie,  and 
John  Drinkwater,  the  first  of  a  series  of  collections 
of  verse  intended  to  be  published  quarterly;  but  across 
this  brilliant  dawn  there  fell  the  black  shadow  of  the 
Great  War. 

What  Sir  Gilbert  Murray  says  of  the  first  Oxford 


/ 


246  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

volume  is  true  of  its  more  ambitious  predecessor  and  suc- 
cessors:— "Each  writer  has  his  own  special  quality  and 

•    character,  and  hardly  any  two  of  them  are  much  alike. 

f   There  is  no  remotest  sign  of  a  school,  a  clique,  or  a  coterie. 

'.  These  writers  are  not  Futurists,  nor  Unanimists,  nor 
Paroxysts,  nor  Asphyxiasts,  nor  members  of  any  other 
rising  doctrinal  body.  They  have  written  as  suited  them 
best,  and  their  work  has  been  judged  for  its  poetry,  not 
for  its  tendency."  This  being  so,  it  seems  wisest  to  deal 
individually  with  such  of  the  "Georgians"  as  seem  to 

^  have  "poetical  sinews  in  them"  and  to  have  done  work 
likely  to  endure. 


A 


}i 


JOHN  MASEFIELD   (1874^        ) 


I 


Masefield's  name  has  been  coupled  with  that  of  Kip- 
ling, who  obviously  influenced  his  earlier  verse,  but  the 
younger  man,  being  a  much  subtler  metrist,  soon  worked 
out  his  own  independent  and  freer  style.  His  wander- 
ing, adventurous  youth  suggested  comparison  with 
Joseph  Conrad,  with  whom  his  chief  Unk  is  a  passion  for 
the  sea;  but  Masefield  is  profoundly  English  and  his 
first  volume  of  poems  showed  a  native  grip  on  English 
lower-class  life  and  diction;  his  love  of  the  sea  comes  from 
within,  and  not  from  any  literary  influence  or  tradition. 
He  might  have  said  with  his  hero  Dauber: — 

"It's  not  been  done,  the  sea,  not  yefBeen  done, 
From  the  inside  by  one  who  really  knows." 

He  did  it  from  the  inside  in  '  Salt  Water  Ballads,'  and 
though  his  life  was  enriched  by  experiences  in  London, 
Rome,  and  New  York,  his  sea  poems  remain  his  most 
remarkable  achievement.     He  reproduces  the  tang,  look, 


THE  NEW  POETS  247 

and  movement  of  the  sea;  in  the  unspeakable  beauty  of 
ships  he  found  his  first  inspiration: — 

"When  I  saw 
Her  masts  across  the  river  rising  queenly, 
Built  out  of  so  much  chaos  brought  to  law, 
I  learned  the  power  of  knowing  how  to  draw. 
Of  beating  thought  into  the  perfect  line, 
I  vowed  to  make  that  power  of  beauty  mine." 

Beyond  and  above  all  this,  Masefield  has  realized  and 
rendered  the  life  of  sea-faring  men — not  merely  their 
wild  romantic  adventures  on  sea  and  shore — yarns  "of 
ships  and  mermaids,  of  topsail  sheets  and  slings,"  but  the 
hard  everyday  experiences  of  the  common  sailor — it  was 
only  here  that  he  found  "life  and  life's  romance": — 

"The  sailor,  the  stoker  of  steamers,  the  man  with  the  clout, 
The  chantyman  bent  at  the  halyards  putting  a  tune  to  the  shout, 
The  drowsy  man  at  the  wheel  and  the  tired  look-out. 

"Others  may  sing  of  the  wine  and  the  wealth  and  the  mirth, 
The  portly  presence  of  potentates  goodly  in  girth; 
Mine  be  the  dirt  and  the  dross,  the  dust  and  scum  of  the  earth! 

"Theirs  be  the  music,  the  colour,  the  glory,  the  gold; 
Mine  be  a  handful  of  ashes,  a  mouthful  of  mould. 
Of  the  maimed,  of  the  halt  and  the  blind  in  the  rain  and  the  cold — 
Of  these  shall  my  songs  be  fashioned,  my  tales  be  told." 

He  could  write  of  these  because  he  had  himself  known 
their  experiences — not  merely  "wild  days  in  a  pampero 
off  the  Plate"  with  surf-swimming  between  rollers,  but 

"Days  of  labour  also,  loading,  hauling; 
Long  days  at  winch  or  capstan,  heaving,  pawling; 
The  days  with  oxen,  dragging  stone  from  blasting, 
And  dusty  days  in  mills,  and  hot  days  masting." 


248 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


II 


These  are  the  things,  he  tells  us  in  his  'Biography,' 
that  made  him: —  —     __ 

"Not  alone  the  ships 
But  men  hard-palmed  from  tallying-on  to  whips, 
The  two  close  friends  of  nearly  twenty  years 
Sea-foUowers  both,  sea-wrestlers  and  sea-peers, 
Whose  feet  with  mine  wore  many  a  bolthead  bright 
Treading  the  decks  beneath  the  riding  light." 

To  a  keen  human  sympathy  with  the  humble  and 
oppressed,  Masefield  added,  even  in  his  earlier  poems,  a 
delicate  sense  of  beauty  and  a  questioning  mind.  His 
"Seekers"  are  looking  for  "the  City  of  God  and  the 
haunt  where  beauty  dwells,"  and  in  spite  of  the  "Waste" 
of  human  life,  he  is  confident  that  "  Death  brings  another 
April  to  the  soul."  His  love  poems,  '  Her  Heart,'  'Being 
Her  Friend '  and  '  Born  for  Nought  Else,^Trave  the  right 
simple  charm  and  music7an3""so  has  'Beauty': — 

"I  have  heard  the  song  of  the  blossoms  and  the  old  chant  of  the  sea, 
And  seen  strange  lands  from  under  the  arched  white  sails  of  ships; 
But  the  loveliest  things  of  beauty  God  ever  has  showed  to  me. 
Are  her  voice,  and  her  hair,  and  eyes,  and  the  dear  red  curve  of  her 
lips." 

Masefield  might  well  have  been  content  with  the  repu- 
tation won  by  his  sea  poems  and  ballads;  but  in  'The 
Everlasting  Mercy'  he  attempted  an  entirely  new  style" 
It  is"fRS"Srtory*of  a  drunken  poacher's  conversion  as  told 
by  himself.  A  single  stanza  will  give  some  idea  of  the 
effects  attempted : — 

"'You  closhy  put' — 
'You  bloody  liar' — 
'This  is  my  field.' 
'This  is  my  wire.' 
'I'm  ruler  here.' 


THE  NEW  POETS  249 

'You  ain't.' 

'I  am.' 

'I'll  fight  you  for  it.' 

'Right,  by  damn.' 

'Not  now,  though,  I've  a-sprained  my  thumb, 

We'll  fight  after  the  harvest  hum. 

And  Silas  Jones,  that  bookie  wide, 

Will  make  a  purse  five  poimds  a  side.' 

Those  were  the  words,  that  was  the  place 

By  which  God  brought  me  into  grace." 

This,  and  the  description  of  the  prize  fight  that  follows 
shows  a  great  deal  of  metrical  versatility  and  literary- 
skill,  but  at  times  one  hardly  knows  whether  the  poet  is 
aiming  at  a  burlesque  effect,  thus: — 

"Jack  chucked  her  chin,  and  Jim  accost  her 
With  bits  out  of  the  'Maid  of  Gloster.' 
And  fifteen  arms  went  round  her  waist. 
(And  then  men  ask.  Are  Barmaids  chaste?) " 

The  last  line  may  be  attributed  to  the  hero  of  the 
story  (though  it  is  not  altogether  in  character),  but  the 
poet  must  take  the  responsibility  for  such  rhymes  as 
"is  and  was — Caiaphas,"  "honest  schism — pauperism," 
"knows  his — disposes,"  "offence — Testaments,"  which 
would  only  be  excusable  if  the  poacher  were  the  author 
of  the  poem. 

'  The  Widow  in  the  Bye  Street,'  like  the  two  long  poems 
that  followed  it,  is  in  Chaucerian  stanza,  which  Masefield 
manages  with  great  skill,  though  he  occasionally  slips 
into  grotesqueness,  rhyming  "bastard — lasted,"  and 
"Susan's — nuisance"  and  ending  one  stanza  thus: — 

"And  then  swept  out  repeating  one  sweet  name 
'Anna,  O  Anna,'  to  the  evening  star. 
Anna  was  sipping  whiskey  in  the  bar." 


II 


250  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

And  again: — 

"She  sighed,  to  hint  that  pleasure's  grave  was  dug, 
And  smiled  within  to  see  him  such  a  mug." 

The  tale  of  Jimmy's  love  for  the  faithless  Anna  and 
his  slaying  of  her  paramour  is  told  with  no  sparing  of 
plain  words,  but  the  attempt  to  regard  this  story  of 
m^urder  and  sensuality  sub  specie  eternitatis  is  unsuccess- 
ful.    Like  Chaucer,  Masefield  moraUses  upon  destiny: — 

"So  the  four  souls  are  ranged,  the  chessboard  set, 
The  dark,  invisible  hand  of  secret  Fate 
Brought  it  to  come  to  being  that  they  met 
After  so  many  years  of  lying  in  wait. 
While  we  least  think  it  he  prepares  his  Mate. 
Mate,  and  the  King's  pawn  played,  it  never  ceases 
Though  all  the  earth  is  dust  of  taken  pieces." 

The  story  fails  because  its  psychology  is  not  deep 
enough  to  be  interesting;  in  'The  Everlasting  Mercy'  the 
hero  tells  his  own  story;  here  it  is  the  author  who  nar- 
rates, and  the  loss  is  hardly  made  up  by  the  addition  of 
descriptive  passages,  though  some  of  these  are  of  great 
beauty : — 

"All  through  the  night  the  stream  ran  to  the  sea, 
The  different  waters  always  saying  the  same, 
Cat-like,  and  then  a  tinkle,  never  glee, 
A  lonely  little  child  alone  in  shame. 
An  otter  snapped  a  thorn  twig  when  he  came, 
It  drifted  down,  it  passed  the  Hazel  Mill, 
It  passed  the  Springs;  but  Jimmy  stayed  there  still." 

'Dauber'  gains  the  interest  of  a  really  attractive  cen- 
tral character  with  a  touch  of  romance  and  above  all  it 
gains  the  interest  of  the  sea,  where  Masefield  is  at  home 
and  has  room  for  both  his  narrative  and  descriptive 


THE  NEW  POETS  251 

powers  so  that  his  imagination  warms  to  its  task  and 
^ves  us  some  of  his  best  work. 

In  '  The  Daffodil  Fields '  Masefield  reverted  to  a  some- 
what melodramatic  story  of  rustic  love  and  jealousy  end- 
ing in  mutual  slaughter,  but  the  workmanship  is  fine, 
and  the  characters  clearly  drawn.  The  Chaucerian 
stanza  is  retained,  but  with  the  last  line  an  Alexandrine, 
which  takes  it  part  way  over  to  the  Spenserian,  but  falls 
between  the  two.  There  are  brilUant  passages,  but  as  a 
whole  the  poem  does  not  attain  the  cumulative  effect  of 
'Dauber.'  "" 

"AH  four  poems  attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention  and 
there  was  much  discussion,  praise  and  dispraise,  alike  of 
detail  and  general  conception.  It  was  agreed  that  they 
were  remarkable,  original  in  their  method  of  treatment 
and  metrical  handling,  but  most,  even  of  the  appreciative 
critics,  had  reservations,  and  the  general  impression  was 
that  Masefield  could  do  better  work — had  indeed  done 
better  work  in  the  poems  of  the  sea.  The  outbreak  of  the 
War  gave  him  a  great  occasion  and  he  rose  to  it  easily 
and  perfectly.  '  August,  1914  'is  not  only  the  best  of  the 
numberless  poems  the  War  produced,  but  it  is  bound  to 
take"  its  place  as  a  classic  in  the  long  and  glorious' history 
of  English  poetry.  With  a  few  quiet  strokes  he  realized 
the  beauty  of  the  English  landscape,  enriched  by  the 
affection  of  unknown  generations,  who,  "century  after 
century  held  these  farms"  and  knew  what  it  meant  to 
answer  the  summons  of  War : — 

"Yet  heard  the  news,  and  went  discoiiraged  home, 
And  brooded  by  the  fire  with  heavy  mind, 
With  such  dumb  loving  of  the  Berkshire  loam 
As  breaks  the  dumb  hearts  of  the  English  kind. 


252 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


/ 


"  Then  sadly  rose  and  left  the  well-loved  Downs 
And  so,  by  ship  to  sea,  and  knew  no  more 
The  fields  of  home,  the  byres,  the  market  towns, 
Nor  the  dear  outline  of  the  EngUsh  shore. 

"  But  knew  the  misery  of  the  soaking  trench, 
The  freezing  in  the  rigging,  the  despair 
In  the  revolting  second  of  the  wTench 
When  the  blind  soul  is  flimg  upon  the  air. 

"  And  died  (uncouthly,  most)  in  foreign  lands 
I        For  some  idea  but  dimly  vmderstood 
I        Of  an  English  city  never  built  by  hands, 

Which  love  of  England  prompted  and  made  good." 

The  grave  elegiac  mood  of  'August,  1914'  prepares  the 
reader  for  the  high  philosophy  of  '  LoUingdon  Downs.' 

"What  is  this  life  which  uses  living  cells 
\       It  knows  not  how  nor  why,  for  no  known  end. 
This  soul  of  man  upon  whose  fragile  shells 
Of  blood  and  brain  his  very  powers  depend. 
Pour  out  its  little  blood  or  touch  its  brain, 
The  thing  is  helpless,  gone,  no  longer  known; 
The  carrion  cells  are  never  man  again, 
No  hand  relights  the  little  candle  blown." 

He  finds  no  answer  to  his  restless  questioning  of  here 
and  hereafter: — 

"It  may  be,  that  we  cease;  we  cannot  tell. 
Even  if  we  cease,  life  is  a  miracle." 

Most  of  all  is  he  puzzled  by  man: — 
"This  atom  which  contains  the  whole, 
This  miracle  which  needs  adjuncts  so  strange, 
This,  which  imagined  God  and  is  the  soul." 

If  its  business  is  not  mainly  earth,  why  should  it  de- 
mand such  heavy  chains  to  sense? 


THE  NEW  POETS  253 

"A  heavenly  thing  demands  a  swifter  birth, 
A  quicker  hand  to  act  intelligence; 
An  earthlier  thing  were  better  like  the  rose, 
At  peace  with  clay  from  which  its  beauty  grows." 

"We  are  neither  heaven  nor  earth,  but  men,"  he  con- 
cludes, and  God  is  of  our  own  making: 

"Let  that  which  is  to  come  be  as  it  may. 
Darkness,  extinction,  justice,  life  intense, 
The  flies  are  happy  in  the  summer  day. 
Flies  will  be  happy  many  simimers  hence. 

"And  when  the  hour  has  struck,  comes  death  or  change, 
Which,  whether  good  or  ill,  we  cannot  teU, 
But  the  blind  planet  will  wander  through  her  range 
Bearing  men  like  us  who  will  serve  as  well. 
The  sun  will  rise,  the  winds  that  ever  move 
Will  blow  our  dust  that  once  were  men  in  love." 

Masefield  has  a  wide  range  and  his  career  is  by  no 
means  finished.  He  is  a  dihgent  student  and  a  careful 
editor,  a  critic  of  insight  and  independent  judgment,  a 
dramatist  of  unusual  power,  an  excellent  storyteller  in 
prose  as  well  as  in  verse,  and  one  of  the  best  descriptive 
writers  of  the  day;  but  it  seems  probable  that  his  per- 
manent fame  will  depend  upon  his  poetry,  which  unites 
very  varied  qualities — a  keen  instinct  for  beauty,  met- 
rical versatility,  skill  in  swift  narrative  and  vivid  de- 
scription of  nature,  reasoning  powers  of  a  high  order,  and 
sympathetic  contact  with  subjects  ranging  from  the 
wrongs  and  sorrows  of  the  humblest  and  most  degraded 
to  the  philosophic  questionings  which  beset  the  keenest 
intellects  of  our  time. 


4. 


/ 


254  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

RUPERT  BROOKE   (1887-1915) 

It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  a  more  complete  con- 
^  trast  to  Masefield's  early  life  of  struggling  vagabondage 
than  the  fortune-favoured  career  of  Rupert  Brooke. 
The  gods  lavished  upon  him  every  gift  of  circumstance 
and  endowment — physical  beauty,  a  brilliant  and  attrac- 
tive personality,  every  educational  opportunity  (he  was  a 
prize-winner  at  Rugby,  and  a  fellow  of  King's  College, 
Cambridge),  the  ease  and  dignity  of  academic  life,  a 
charming  retreat  at  Granchester  Vicarage,  congenial  and 
sympathetic  friends,  devotion  to  a  great  cause,  death  at 
Lemnos  on  St.  George's  Day,  and  a  fitting  burial  place 
in  the  Island  of  Skyros.  His  loss  was  lamented  by  the 
leading  masters  of  prose  and  verse,  and  the  romantic 
ending  of  his  career  at  once  won  pubhc  attention.  The 
War,  which  stunned  older  writers  into  silence  or  stam- 
mering inadequacy,  gave  him  a  lofty  and  dignified  ut- 
terance he  had  hitherto  failed  to  attain.  The  coldest 
literary  historian  cannot  but  be  impressed  by  so  bright  a 
spirit,  suddenly  rising  to  the  height  of  a  great  oppor- 
tunity and  as  suddenly  extinguished  by  death  in  the 
service  of  the  cause  he  celebrated.  Whether  he  could 
have  kept  the  pitch  is  a  question  no  one  can  answer;  but 
the  perfect  rounding  of  his  achievement  offers  at  least 
some  consolation  for  his  early  death. 

"I  suppose,"  says  his  friend  and  fellow  poet  John 
Drinkwater,  "no  one  of  his  years  can  ever  have  had  in 
greater  measure  the  gifts  that  can  be  used  to  make  easily 
swayed  admiration  gape,  or  greater  temptations  so  to 
employ  his  quaUties;  and  I  am  sure  no  man  has  ever 
been  more  wholly  indifferent  to  any  such  conquests. 
Humour  he  had  in  abundance,  but  of  witty  insincerity 


THE  NEW  POETS  255 

no  trace.  Never  was  a  personality  more  finely  balanced. 
.  .  .  It  has  been  said  that  he  had  a  strain  of  self- 
consciousness  about  his  personal  charm  and  briUiance, 
that  he  was  a  little  afraid  lest  that  side  of  him  should 
claim  too  much  attention.  To  answer  the  suggestion 
would  be  an  impertinence.  He  was  properly  glad  of  his 
qualities;  also,  he  was  properly  careless  of  them.  The 
notion  that  any  such  matter  ever  occupied  his  mind  for 
a  moment  can  be  nothing  but  ludicrous  to  those  who 
knew  him." 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  with  this  the  personal 
impression  made  by  Rupert  Brooke  upon  Henry  James 
as  a  "beautifully  producible"  specimen  of  the  amenity 
and  energy  of  the  English  tradition,  of  the  exquisite 
civility,  the  social  instincts  of  the  race.  He  imagines  the 
EngUsh  as  being  able  to  say: — 

"Yes,  this,  with  the  imperfection  of  so  many  of  our 
arrangements,  with  the  persistence  of  so  many  of  our 
mistakes,  with  the  waste  of  so  much  of  our  effort  and  the 
weight  of  the  many-coloured  mantle  of  time  that  drags  so 
redundantly  about  us,  this  natural  accommodation  of 
the  English  spirit,  this  frequent  extraordinary  beauty  of 
the  English  aspect,  this  finest  saturation  of  the  English 
inteUigence  by  its  most  immediate  associations,  tasting 
as  they  mainly  do  of  the  long  past,  this  ideal  image  of 
Enghsh  youth,  in  a  word,  at  once  radiant  and  reflective, 
are  things  that  appeal  to  us  as  delightfully  exhibitional 
beyond  a  doubt,  yet  as  drawn,  to  the  last  fibre,  from  the 
very  wealth  of  our  conscience  and  the  very  force  of  our 
own  history.  We  haven't,  for  such  an  instance  of  our 
genius,  to  reach  out  to  strange  places  or  across  other,  and 
otherwise    productive   tracts;    the   exemplary   instance 


256  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

himself  has  well-nigh  as  a  matter  of  course  reached  and 
revelled,  for  that  is  exactly  our  way  in  proportion  as  we 
feel  ourselves  clear.  But  the  kind  of  experience  so  en- 
tailed, of  contribution  so  gathered,  is  just  what  we  wear 
easiest  when  we  have  been  least  stinted  of  it,  and  what  our 
English  use  of  makes  perhaps  our  vividest  reference  to 
our  thick-growing  native  determinants." 

The  generously  perfect  endowment  of  Brooke  sug- 
gested to  Henry  James  the  question,  "Why  need  he  be  a 
poet,  why  need  he  so  speciaUze?"  Well,  the  gods  had 
added  this  gift  too.  Even  in  the  poems  written  before 
he  was  21,  Brooke  shows  an  almost  uncanny  power  of 
deft  expression.  He  can  versify  two  Germans  in  the 
night  train  between  Bologna  and  Milan  (second  class)  or 
a  sensual  music  lover  at  a  Wagner  concert : — 

"The  music  swells.     His  gross  lips  quiver 
His  little  eyes  are  bright  with  slime. 
The  music  swells.    The  women  shiver 
And  all  the  while,  in  perfect  time, 
His  pendulous  stomach  hangs  a-shaking." 

In  technique,  in  intelligence  he  was  already  mature. 
He  imagines  the  poet  as  going  on  a  magnificent  quest 
to  curse  God  on  His  throne  of  fire,  and  finding — 
nothing: — 

"All  the  great  courts  were  quiet  as  the  svm, 
And  fuU  of  vacant  echoes;  moss  had  grown 
Over  the  glassy  pavement,  and  begvm 
To  creep  within  the  dusty  council-halls. 
An  idle  wind  blew  round  an  empty  throne 
And  stirred  the  heavy  cmiiains  on  the  walls." 

Only  in  emotional  experience  is  he  immature,  with  the 
assumed  maturity  of  extreme  youth.     His  "heart  is  sick 


THE  NEW   POETS  257 

with  memories/*  and  even  in  the  hour  of  "one  last  mad 
embrace"  he  reminds  his  love  that 

"Each  crawling  day- 
Will  pale  a  little  your  scarlet  lips,  each  mile 
Dull  the  dear  pain  of  yoiu*  remembered  face." 

Obviously  no  lover  is  conscious  of  such  truths  in  the 
moment  of  passion.  In  Meredith's  'Modern  Love'  the 
husband  says  "Ah,  Yes,  love  dies!"  but  he  adds  in  recol- 
lection "I  never  thought  it  less."  With  Brooke  it  was 
a  thought  he  could  never  get  away  from.  In  the  fine 
sonnet  included  in  the  poems  of  1908-11  'The  Hill,'  the 
lovers  defy  old  age  and  death — 

"And  then  you  suddenly  cried,  and  turned  away." 

In  the  poems  of  this  period  Brooke  has  a  surer  touch, 
not  merely  of  phrase,  but  of  presentation.  His  cynicism 
begins  to  gain  in  humour.  In  '  Menelaus  and  Helen '  he 
contrasts,  effectively  enough,  the  Helen  of  romance  with 
the  repentant  wife  who 

"Bears 
Child  on  legitimate  child,  becomes  a  scold, 
Haggard  with  virtue." 

'The  One  before  the  Last'  is  also  in  a  lighter  vein: — 

"Oh!  bitter  thoughts  I  had  in  plenty 
But  here's  the  worst  of  it — 
I  shall  forget,  in  Nineteen-twenty, 
You  ever  hurt  a  bit!" 

'A  Channel  Passage'  is  Brooke's  most  outrageous 
example  in  the  presentation  of  offensive  ugliness,  and  it 
it  necessary  to  remember  that  he  was  still  young,  with 
gifts  that  demanded  some  price  to  be  paid,  if  only  in  the 
way  of  temptation  to  misuse  them. 

18 


258  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

In  the  summer  of  1913  Brooke  crossed  the  American 
continent  and  went  by  way  of  the  Pacific  in  the  autumn 
to  Samoa.  Some  of  the  poems  suggested  by  the  visit 
were  pubHshed  in  'New  Numbers'  for  February  and 
August,  1914,  but  a  growing  ripeness  of  thought  is  more 
fully  shown  in  'The  Great  Lover,'  pubhshed  along  with 
them  in  the  latter  month  and  dated  "Mataiea,  1914." 
The  intervening  April  number  contained  'Heaven,'  one 
of  his  deftest  ironical  analyses  of  romance — in  this  case 
the  romantic  anthropomorphism  of  popular  theology: — 

"Fish  say,  they  have  their  stream  and  pond, 
But  is  there  anything  beyond? 
This  life  cannot  be  all,  they  swear, 
For  how  unpleasant  if  it  were! 
One  may  not  doubt  that,  somehow  Good 
Shall  come  of  Water  and  of  Mud!" 

and  so  on  to  the  faith  in  "wetter  water,  slimier  slime": — 

"And  xmder  that  Almighty  Fin, 
The  littlest  fish  may  enter  in. 
Oh!  never  fly  conceals  a  hook. 
Fish  say,  in  the  Eternal  Brook, 
But  more  than  mundane  weeds  are  there, 
And  mud,  celestially  fair; 
Fat  caterpillars  drift  around. 
And  paradisal  grubs  are  found; 
Unfading  moths,  immortal  flies, 
And  the  worm  that  never  dies. 
And  in  that  Heaven  of  aU  their  wish, 
There  shall  be  no  more  land,  say  fish." 

Upon  this  poem  it  is  perhaps  well  to  quote  the  com- 
ment of  John  Drinkwater: — "When  the  poet  elects  to 
make  brief  intellectual  holiday,  so  long  as  he  does  so  in 
the  terms  of  his  own  personality,  we  should  do  nothing 


THE  NEW  POETS  259 

but  make  holiday  gladly  with  him."  '  The  Old  Vicarage, 
Granchester,'  which  appears  to  belong  to  an  earlier  date, 
is  an  altogether  charming  example  of  intellectual  play- 
fulness; the  lightheartedness  of  'The  Chilterns'  suggests 
that  Brooke  had  at  last  got  the  better  of  the  eternal  anti- 
nomy between  love  and  old  age  which  haunted  his  early 
youth: — 

"And  I  shall  find  some  girl  perhaps, 
And  a  better  one  than  you, 
With  eyes  as  wise,  but  kindlier, 
And  lips  as  soft,  but  true. 
And  I  daresay  she  will  do." 

So  Rupert  Brooke  stood  at  the  beginning  of  the  war — 
the  ideal  modern  Englishman  with  senses  and  inteUi- 
gence  all  alert,  a  keen  gift  of  humour,  a  supreme  gift  of 
expression  which  had  hitherto  not  found  its  way.  He 
has  given  us,  under  a  thin  veil,  his  impressions  when  he 
first  heard  of  the  war : — 

"As  he  thought  'England  and  Germany,'  the  word 
'England'  seemed  to  flash  like  a  line  of  foam.  .  .  . 
He  was  immensely  surprised  to  perceive  that  the  actual 
earth  of  England  held  for  him  a  quahty  which  he  found 

in  A ,  and  in  a  friend's  honour,  and  scarcely  anywhere 

else,  a  quality  which,  if  he'd  ever  been  sentimental  enough 
to  use  the  word,  he'd  have  called  'holiness.'  His  aston- 
ishment grew  as  the  full  flood  of  'England'  swept  him 
on  from  thought  to  thought.  He  felt  the  triumphant 
helplessness  of  a  lover." 

It  was  this  that  gave  the  sonnet  series  '1914'  its  dis- 
tinguishing note.  A  fellow  poet,  Lascelles  Abercrombie, 
has  well  said: — "Rupert  Brooke  had  a  decided  advantage 
over  other  patriotic  poets;  when  he  celebrated  the  fault- 


260  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

less  beauty  of  sacrificing  oneself  for  England,  they  were 
his  own  immediate  emotions  that  he  expressed.  He 
knew  that  beauty  of  self-sacrifice  not  by  any  effort  of 
imagination,  but  simply  because  it  was  the  thing  that 
entirely  governed  his  hfe  from  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
And  in  five  sonnets  he  set  forth  the  whole  of  it,  with  a 
beauty  of  music  and  imagery  perfectly  answering  to  the 
spiritual  beauty." 

There  is  no  question  that  the  sonnet  series  is  the  crown- 
ing glory  of  Brooke's  poetic  achievement.  He  was  moved 
to  the  depths  of  his  rich  nature  as  he  had  never  been 
before,  and  all  his  gifts  of  artistic  endowment  thrilled  for 
use  in  the  supreme  offering  of  himself  and  his  powers  to 
one  great  object.  The  sacrifice  was  consecrated  by  his 
death;  but  even  without  this  added  glory,  the  emotion 
expressed  in  these  five  sonnets  would  have  remained  an 
abiding  witness  of  the  power  of  England  to  stir  the  hearts 
of  men  to  devotion  and  to  beauty. 


/. 


WILFRID  WILSON  GIBSON 


Wilfrid  Gibson's  poetic  development  is  interesting  in 
itself,  and  helps  us  to  understand  the  kind  of  work  he  has 
come  to  do.  He  began  to  pubhsh  in  1902  lyrics  which 
have  grace  and  charm,  but  are  not  otherwise  distinguished 
amid  much  other  meritorious  work  of  the  type  and  time. 
But  in  'The  Stonef olds'  (1907)  he  turned  aside  from  con- 
ventional romance  to  present  the  life  of  the  rather  grim 
shepherd  folk  of  his  own  rugged  Northumbrian  hills. 
The  form  is  very  simply  dramatic — there  are  only  three 
or  four  characters  in  each  little  scene  and  the  incident  is 
slight,  though  the  characterisation  is  clear;  the  metre  is 


THE  NEW  POETS  261 

blank  verse,  which  combines  oddly  with  the  North  Coun- 
try 'Hhou"  to  give  an  impression  of  artificiality.  Such 
a  line  as  the  following,  coming  from  a  shepherd's  wife, 
strikes  cold  on  the  ear: — 

"Is  this  thy  wisdom?    Little  hast  thou  learned." 

Evidently  some  different  medium  was  needed,  and  in 
'Daily  Bread'  (1910)  Gibson  tried  again.  He  was  by 
this  time  perfectly  clear  about  what  he  was  trying  to  do, 
as  the  motto  of  the  book  shows: — 

"All  life  moving  to  one  measure — ■ 
Daily  bread,  daily  bread — 
Bread  of  life,  and  bread  of  labour, 
Bread  of  bitterness  and  sorrow, 
Hand  to  mouth,  and  no  to-morrow. 
Dearth  for  housemate,  death  for  neighbour.     .     .    . 
Yet,  when  all  the  babes  are  fed, 
Love,  are  there  not  crumbs  to  treasure?" 

The  poet's  aim  was  to  catch  the  gleam  of  romance  in 

everyday  life  without  ever  losing  hold  of  reality."  "Free 
verse '^  was  at  this  time  being  much  discussed,  not  oTily 
in  England  but  in  France  and  the  United  States,  and  it 
was  not  surprising  that  Gibson  should  try  what  he  could 
do  with  it.  It  seemed  to  suit  the  subject  he  had  chosen — 
the  struggle  of  the  labouring  poor  for  daily  bread — and 
to  be  capable  of  reproducing  the  effect  of  everyday 
conversation.     Take  such  a  passage  as  this: — 

"  And  there's  small  blame  to  them 
Who  drink  too  much,  at  whiles. 
There's  little  else  the  poor  can  get  too  much  of, 
And  life,  at  best,  is  dull  enough,  God  knows. 
Sometimes,  it's  better  to  forget.     .     .     . 
And     .     .     .     it's  a  lovely  dizziness." 


262  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

The  experiment  attracted  considerable  attention  and 
some  praise.  Mary  C.  Sturgeon  in  her  '  Studies  of  Con- 
teipporary  Poets'  (l916)  says  of  it: — 

"The  curious  structure  of  the  verse  is  apparent  at  a  glance — the 
'irregular  pattern,  the  extreme  variation  in  the  length  of  the  line,  the 
absence  of  rhyme  and  the  strange  metrical  effects.  It  is  a  new  musi- 
cal instrument,  having  little  outward  resemblance  to  the  grace  and 
dignity  of  regular  forms.  Its  unfamiliarity  may  displease  the  eye 
and  ear  at  first,  but  it  is  not  long  before  we  perceive  the  design  which 
controls  its  apparent  waywardness,  and  recognize  its  fitness  to  express 
the  life  that  the  poet  has  chosen  to  depict.  For  it  suggests,  as  no 
rhyme  or  regular  measure  could,  the  ruggedness  of  this  existence  and 
the  characteristic  utterance  of  its  people.  No  symimetrical  verse, 
with  its  sense  of  something  complete,  precise  and  clear,  could  convey 
such  an  impression  as  this — of  speech  struggling  against  natural  reti- 
cence to  express  the  turmoil  of  thought  and  emotion  in  an  untrained 
mind.  Mr.  Gibson  has  invented  a  metrical  form  which  admirably 
produces  that  effect,  without  condescending  to  a  crude  realism.  He 
has  made  the  worker  articulate,  supplying  just  the  coherence  and 
lucidity  which  art  demands,  but  preserving,  in  this  irregular  outline, 
in  the  plain  diction  and  simple  phrasing,  an  acute  sense  of  reality; 

Be  this  as  it  may,  the  poet  himself  was  not  entirely 
satisfied;  he  probably  felt  that  the  rhythm  of  the  new 
verse  was  not  sufficiently  distinguished  from  prose  to  give 
the  necessary  artistic  suggestion  to  the  imagination,  and 
even  in  his  skilful  hands  the  impression  of  monotony  was 
not  always  avoided.  In  his  next  series  of  studies  of  the 
lives  of  humble  toil — narrative  this  time — he  returned 
definitely  to  rhyme.  The  three  Httle  volume'S-ar&-<;ol- 
lecti'CCly  called  'Fires,'  and  the  charming  prelude  pictures 
the  poet  dreaming  by  his  hearth  and  seeing  fantastic 
shapes  in  the  embers : — 

"Till,  dazzled  by  the  drowsy  glare, 
I  shut  my  eyes  to  heat  and  light; 
And  saw,  in  sudden  night. 


THE  NEW  POETS  263 

Crouched  in  the  dripping  dark, 
With  steaming  shoulders  stark, 
The  man  who  hews  the  coal  to  feed  my  fire." 

These  sketches  give  a  fuller,  richer  impression  of  the 
life  of  the  poor,  with  more  colour  and  humour,  and  the 
poet,  whether  speaking  in  his  own  name  or  dramatically, 
infuses  more  of  his  own  imagination  into  the  story.  Take 
for  example  'The  Hare,'  which  is  told  by  a  lad  of  seven- 
teen who,  after  dfeambig  of  taking  in  his  hands  a  terror- 
stricken  hare,  follows  one  along  the  roadside  and  catches 
the  same  look  of  terror  in  the  eyes  of  a  girl  he  meets  by 
a  gipsy  camp-fire.  He  helps  her  to  escape  from  the  man 
she  is  afraid  of,  and  together  they  tramp  the  moorland 
trackways.  One  night  his  dream  of  the  hare  comes  back 
to  him  and  he  wakes  in  a  fright : — 

"Her  place  was  empty  in  the  straw.     .     .    . 
And  then,  with  quaking  heart,  I  saw 
That  she  was  standing  in  the  night, 
A  leveret  cuddled  to  her  breast.     .     .     . 

I  spoke  no  word;  but,  as  the  light 
Through  banks  of  Eastern  cloud  was  breaking, 
She  turned,  and  saw  that  I  was  waking. 
And  told  me  how  she  could  not  rest; 
And,  rising  in  the  night,  she'd  found 
This  baby  hare  crouched  on  the  ground; 
And  she  had  nursed  it  quite  a  while. 
But,  now,  she'd  better  let  it  go. 
Its  mother  would  be  fretting  so. 
A  mother's  heart.     .     .    . 
I  saw  her  smile. 
And  look  at  me  with  tender  eyes; 
And  as  I  looked  into  their  light. 
My  foolish,  fearful  heart  grew  wise 
And  now,  I  knew  that  never  there 
I'd  see  again  the  startled  hare. 
Or  need  to  dread  the  dreams  of  night." 


264  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Some  critics  objected  to  the  hare  episodes  as  too  fanci- 
ful and  strained,  but  there  is  no  question  that  the  execu- 
tion of  the  poem  is  as  beautiful  as  the  original  conception; 
it  is  all  suffused  with  delicate  imaginative  feehng,  and 
the  verse  is  a  delight. 

Gibson  returned  to  this  form  in  subsequent  volumes 
and  practised  it  with  infinite  variety  of  subject  and  tone. 
'The  Swing'  reproduces  a  little  servant  girl's  enjoyment 
of  a*1Kar3-won  holiday: — 

"Yesterday 
She'd  hardly  thought  she'd  get  away; 
The  mistress  was  that  cross,  and  she 
Had  only  told  her  after  tea 
That  ere  she  left  she  must  set  to 
And  turn  the  parlour  out.     She  knew, 
Ay,  well  enough,  that  it  meant  more 
Than  two  hours'  work.     And  so  at  four 
She'd  risen  this  morn,  and  done  it  all 
Before  her  mistress  went  to  call 
And  batter  at  her  bedroom  door 
At  six  to  rouse  her.     Such  a  floor, 
So  hard  to  sweep;  and  all  that  brass 
To  polish!     Any  other  lass 
But  her  would  have  thrown  up  the  place, 
And  told  the  mistress  to  her  face.     .     .     ." 

'Between  the  Lines'  is  a  war-study,  but  one  in  Gibson's 
characteristic  nrafiner.  His  soldier  had  been  a  draper's 
assistant  (dry  goods  clerk)  and  as  he  Ues  wounded  in  a 
shell-hole  he  muses: — 

"This  was  different  certainly. 
From  selling  knots  of  tape  and  reels  of  thread 
And  knots  of  tape  and  reels  of  thread  and  knots 
Of  tape  and  reels  of  thread  and  knots  of  tai>e, 
Day  in,  day  out,  and  answering  '  Have  you  got's? ' 


THE  NEW  POETS 


265 


And  'Do  you  keep's?*  till  there  seemed  no  escape 
From  everlasting  serving  in  a  shop, 
Inquiring  what  each  customer  required, 
Politely  talking  weather,  fit  to  drop, 
With  swollen  ankles,  tired.     ..." 

Only. great  imaginative  sympathy  and  technical  skill 
could  achieve  the  bringing  out  of  the  romance  in  the  shop- 
man's life  at  the  very  point  at  which  it  seems  most  pro- 
saic— its  monotony.  In  the  same  volume,  entitled 
'Battlg,'  Gibson  perfected  a  new  form  of  short  rhymed 
poem  of  which  one  example  will  serve  better  than  descrip- 
tion or  definition,  'The  Father': — 

"That  was  his  sort. 
It  didn't  matter 
What  we  were  at 
But  he  must  chatter 
Of  this  and  that 
His  little  son 
Had  said  or  done; 
Till,  as  he  told 
The  fiftieth  time 
Without  a  change 
How  three-year-old 
Prattled  a  rhyme. 
They  got  the  range 
And  cut  him  short." 

The  ironical  humour  of  this  and  of  many  others  of 
these  miniatures  is  grim  enough,  but  it  is  never  lacking 
in  sympathy,  and  it  is  extraordinarily  effective.  Gibson 
shows  us  the  weariness,  the  madness,  the  cruelty  and 
pain  of  the  trenches  as  they  appear  to  the  common  sol- 
dier, and  clothes  them  in  his  own  imaginative  beauty  of 
phrase  and  setting. 


/ 


266 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


WILLLA.M   H.   DA  VIES   (1872-        ) 

The  poems  of  W.  H.  Da  vies  need  no  extrinsic  circum- 
stance to  commend  them,  but  their  interest  is  certainly 
enhanced  by  the  extraordinary  conditions  under  which  he 
began  his  Uterary  career.  As  he  has  told  the  whole  story 
fully  and  frankly  in  his  'Autobiography  of  a  Super- 
Tramp,'  there  can  be  no  indiscretion  in  summarizing  it 
here.  Born  in  a  Newport  (Monmouthshire)  public- 
house,  he  passed  a  wayward  youth,  which  brought  him 
at  an  early  age  into  conflict  with  the  police  (he  was 
whipped  in  goal  for  heading  a  youthful  gang  of  thieves), 
and  as  soon  as  he  was  out  of  his  apprenticeship  as  a  pic- 
ture frame  maker,  he  crossed  the  Atlantic.  Falling  in 
with  a  professional  tramp  at  a  small  town  in  Connecticut, 
he  beat  his  way  to  Chicago,  begging  victuals  from  the 
farmers'  wives,  and  stealing  an  occasional  ride  on  the 
railway.  He  objected  to  this  mode  of  life  because  it 
gave  him  no  chance  to  enrich  his  mind,  but  he  kept  at  it 
through  many  wanderings  until  an  attempt  in  Canada  to 
board  a  train  in  motion  so  as  to  escape  paying  his  fare 
deprived  him  of  a  foot.  He  then  returned  to  England, 
and,  as  he  had  fallen  in  for  a  legacy  which  brought  him  in 
a  few  shiUings  a  week,  he  decided  to  devote  himself  to 
literature.  He  read  widely  in  free  libraries  and  wrote  a 
tragedy  in  blank  verse,  which,  to  his  astonishment,  was 
returned  by  one  publisher  after  another.  English  tramp- 
ing expeditions,  combined  with  collecting  the  pennies  for 
a  one-legged  "gridler"  (street-singer),  enabled  him  to 
save  enough  money  to  get  his  first  poems  printed,  but 
the  periodicals  to  which  they  were  sent  for  review  paid  no 
attention  to  them.  After  vainly  seeking  the  help  of 
sundry  charitable  organizations,  he  took  the  matter  into 


THE  NEW  POETS  267 

his  own  hands.  Personal  appeals  (accompanied  by- 
copies  of  the  poems)  not  merely  brought  in  money  but 
secured  reviews  in  the  leading  papers,  and  his  literary 
position  was  established  forthwith.  Within  ten  years  he 
had  published  two  or  three  considerable  volumes  of  prose 
and  eight  little  books  of  verse,  immediately  re-issued  as 
'Collected  Poems.' 

It  was  a  most  astonishing,  almost  an  incredible  achieve- 
ment, and  the  most  remarkable  thing  about  it  was  that 
the  poems  made  their  own  way  when  their  author's 
romantic  story  was  forgotten.  Once  well-started  on  his 
literary  career,  Davies  made  no  attempt  to  exploit  his 
sensational  past  or  to  find  in  it  materials  for  such  realistic 
studies  of  low  life  as  were  winning  fame  and  fortune  for 
contemporary  poets.  A  pure  lyrist,  he  continued  to  sing 
the  graceful  songs  of  love  and  nature  with  which  he  had 
first  won  the  ear  of  the  pubHc,  although  such  early  poems 
as  'In  a  Lodging  House,'  'Saints  and  Lodgers,'  and  'The 
Lodging  House  Fire'  proved  that  he  was  not  unaware 
of  the  opportunity  or  incapable  of  taking  advantage  of 
it.  A  small  Government  pension  (£50  a  year)  "in  rec- 
ognition of  his  poetical  work"  suffices  for  his  simple 
wants : — 

"  No  maid  is  near, 

I  have  no  wife; 
But  here's  my  pipe 

And,  on  my  life; 
With  it  to  smoke, 

And  woo  the  Muse, 
To  be  a  king 

I  would  not  choose." 


/ 


Davies's  contempt  for  the  ordinary  luxuries  and  com- 
forts of  life  is  genuine.     What  he  sought  in  the  life  of  a 


268  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

tramp  was  freedom,  and  he  did  not  find  it.  He  quotes 
himself  as  saying  to  a  fellow-tramp  from  whom  he  wished 
to  part: — "Your  life  is  not  mine.  We  often  go  for  days 
without  reading  matter,  and  we  know  not  what  the  world 
is  saying;  nor  what  the  world  is  doing.  The  beauty  of 
nature  is  for  ever  before  my  eyes,  but  I  am  certainly  not 
enriching  my  mind,  for  who  can  contemplate  Nature 
with  any  profit  in  the  presence  of  others?  I  have  no 
leisure  to  make  notes  in  hopes  of  future  use  and  I  am  so 
overpacking  my  memory  with  all  these  scenes,  that  when 
their  time  comes  for  use,  they  will  not  then  take  definite 
shape.  I  must  go  to  work  for  some  months,  so  that  I 
may  live  sparingly  on  my  savings  in  some  large  city, 
where  I  can  cultivate  my  mind." 

What  Davies  wanted  was  leisure,  and  having  gained  it 
after  a  hard  and  painful  struggle,  he  has  used  it  to  some 
purpose.  He  has  the  genuine  poet  soul,  born  in  a  strange 
time  and  in  stranger  surroundings,  but  speaking  the  un- 
mistakably authentic  accent  of  sincerity: — 
,  "Let  me  be  free  to  wear  my  dreams 

'  Like  weeds  in  some  mad  maiden's  hair, 

When  she  believes  the  earth  has  not 

Another  maid  so  rich  and  fair; 

And  proudly  smiles  on  rich  and  poor, 

The  queen  of  all  fair  women  then; 

So  I,  dressed  in  my  idle  dreams, 

Will  think  myself  the  king  of  men." 

WALTER  JOHN   DE  LA   MARE   (1873-        )  . 

*  ^  \       Davies  has  some  charming  poems  about  children,  but 

-^  the  children's  poet  of  the  period  is  Walter  de  la  Mare. 

His  '  Soi^  of  Childhood '  continued  in  delicate  verse  the 

well-estabirshed  tradition  of  ogres  and  witches,  gnomes 


THE  NEW  POETS  269 

and  elves,  and  'Peacock  Pie'  has  a  wealth  of  fanciful 
rhymes  arranged  under  headings  such  as  '  Up  and  Down/ 
'Boys  and  Girls,'  'Places  and  People,'  'Witches  and  Fair- 
ies,' 'Earth  and  Air.'  But  besides  dainty  rhymes  for 
children,  he  writes  more  profound  fancies  for  older  readers 
and  some  that  would  do  for  both.  Perhaps  we  should 
put  in  the  latter  class  the  poem  in  '  The  Listeners '  which 
tells  how  on  a  summer  afternoon  a  httle  girl  found  her 
mother  asleep  in  a  chair: — 

"Even  her  hands  upon  her  lap 
Seemed  saturate  with  sleep. 
And  as  Ann  peeped,  a  cloudlike  dread 
Stole  over  her,  and  then, 
On  stealthy,  mouselike  feet  she  trod, 
And  tiptoed  out  again." 

No  less  charmingly  effective — though  perhaps  only  for 
grown  ups — is  the  poem  in  the  same  volume  entitled 
'Miss  Loo,' — an  absent-minded  maiden  lady  whom  the 
poet  re-embodies  from  the  recollections  of  his  childhood : — 

"And  I  am  sitting,  dull  and  shy, 
And  she  with  gaze  of  vacancy, 
And  large  hands  folded  on  the  tray, 
Musing  the  afternoon  away; 
Her  satin  bosom  heaving  slow 
With  sighs  that  softly  ebb  and  flow, 
And  her  plain  face  in  such  dismay, 
It  seems  imkind  to  look  her  way. 
Until  aU  cheerful  back  will  come 
Her  cheerful  gleaming  spirit  home. 
And  one  would  think  that  poor  Miss  Loo 
Asked  nothing  else,  if  she  had  you." 

Less  successful  is  a  similar  sketch  in  'Motley'  (1918) 
of  'Mrs.  Grundy,'  who  has 


270  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"Called  me,  'dear  Nephew,'  on  each  of  those  chairs, 
Has  gloated  in  righteousness,  heard  my  prayers. 
High-coifed,  broad-browed,  aged,  suave  yet  grim, 
A  large  flat  face,  eyes  keenly  dim. 
Staring  at  nothing — that's  me! — and  yet. 
With  a  hate  one  could  never,  no,  never  forget." 

This  lacks  the  innocence  which  is  the  chief  charm  of 
childhood,  and  is  so  far  less  effective  on  that  account,  but 
the  httle  picture  is  clearly  drawn.  Perhaps  under  the 
weight  and  stress  of  the  War,  de  la  Mare  has  been  drifting 
away  from  the  simplicity  of  his  earlier  Muse  into  some- 
thing like  mysticism.  Thus,  'The  Scribe'  imagines  him- 
self drawing  on  for  ever  with  the  ink  of  some  tarn  in  the 
hills  the  wonders  of  God  he  sees  about  him: — 

"Still  would  remain 
My  wit  to  try — 
My  worn  reeds  broken, 
The  dark  tarn  dry, 
All  words  forgotten — 
Thou,  Lord,  and  I." 

LASCELLES  ABERCROMBEE    (1881-        ) 

Lascelles  Abercrombie  has  none  of  the  various  quali- 
yties  which  have  given  the  poets  already  discussed,  for 
one  reason  or  another,  some  popular  appeal.  His  massive 
and  acute  intellect  finds  freer  play  in  criticism  aiTd'TirSta- 
physics  tharfln  poetry,  and  his  verse  is  almost  devoid  of 
sensuous  attraction  of  any  kind.  Severe  alike  in  subject 
and  in  treatment,  it  appeals  only  to  the  intelligence. 
His  first  volume  treats  dramatically  in  blank  verse  with- 
out a  touch  of  romance  two  mediaeval  legends,  along  with 
other  subjects,  all  regarded  on  the  intellectual  side,  and 
contains  also  a  dialogue  between  the  Body  and  the  Soul, 


THE  NEW  POETS  271 

and  an  Ode  to  Indignation.  Two  more  mediaeval 
legends,  'Mary  and  the  Bramble'  and  'The  Sale  of  St. 
Thomas/  followed,  and  were  published  by  the  author 
privately.  A  brief  extract  from  the  latter  poem  may  give 
a  hint  of  the  poet's  method  and  style.  St.  Thomas,  bid- 
den to  take  ship  for  the  conversion  of  India,  hesitates  on 
the  quay,  not  from  cowardice  but  from  prudence,  until 
his  Lord  appears  and  sells  him  as  a  slave  to  the  sea- 
captain: — 

"Now,  Thomas,  know  thy  sin.     It  was  not  fear; 
Easily  may  a  man  crouch  down  for  fear, 
And  yet  rise  up  on  firmer  knees,  and  face 
The  hailing  etorm  of  the  world  with  graver  courage. 
But  prudence,  prudence  is  the  deadly  sin, 
And  one  that  groweth  deep  into  a  life, 
With  hardening  roots  that  clutch  about  the  breast, 
For  this  refuses  faith  in  the  xmknown  powers 
Within  man's  nature." 

In  'Emblems  of  Love'  the  subject  treated  is  still  more 
abstruse  and  difficult.  A  'prelude  of  discovery  and 
prophecy '  reveals  first  two  warriors  at  the  dawn  of  civil- 
ization; one  cherishes  women  as  the  breeder  of  more 
warriors  against  the  wolves,  the  other  as  the  source  of 
beauty  and  pleasure.  In  '  Vashti '  we  move  a  step  onward 
in  the  distinction  she  puts  to  Ahasuerus: — 

"Lovest  thou  me,  or  dost  thou  rather  love 
The  pleasure  thou  hast  in  me?" 

She  refuses  herself  to  Ahasuerus  and  is  driven  out  of 
the  palace,  but  as  she  goes  the  Goddess  Ishtar  appears  to 
her  and  reveals  the  future : — 

"There  shall  be 
Of  man  desiring,  and  of  woman  desired, 
A  single  ectasy  divinely  formed. 


272  ENGLISH  LITEBATURE 

Two  souls  knowing  themselves  in  one  amazement. 
All  that  thou  hatest  to  arouse  in  man 
Prepareth  him  for  this;  and  thou  thyself 
Art  by  thy  very  hate  prepared." 

Part  II  shows  us  in  three  dramatic  episodes  love  in 
imperfection;  Part  III,  '  Virginity  and  Perfection,'  drama- 
tizes the  story  of  Judith,  who  is  taken  as  an  emblem  of  the 
power  of  the  spiritual  against  the  material.  We  have 
next  a  dialogue  'The  Eternal  Wedding,'  a  'Marriage 
Song,'  and  finally  an  'Epilogue,'  all  rendered  in  the  same 
high  intellectual  strain.  There  is  no  question  of  the 
keenness  of  the  intelligence  at  work  or  of  the  excellence 
of  the  verse;  but  it  is  a  cold  arid  region  of  the  mind  where 
few  can  long  breathe  the  rarified  air.  Abercrombie  is 
highly  esteemed,  especially  by  his  fellow  poets;  but  that 
he  will  ever  win  any  large  number  of  readers  seems  very 
improbable. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

JOHN  MASEFIELD 
Poems 


y 


1902  '  Salt-Water  Ballads. ' 

1903  'Ballads.' 

1910     'Ballads  and  Poems.' 


/" 


y        1912     'The  Everlasting  Mercy'  ('English  Review,'  Oct.,  1911). 
'The  Widow  in  the  Bye  Streef  ('English  Review'  Feb.). 
^  1913  .  'Dauber'  ('English  Review,'  Oct.,  1912). 

'The  Daffodil  Fields'  ('English  Review,'  Feb.). 

1916  'Sonnets  and  Poems.' 

1917  'Lollingdon  Downs  and  other  Poems.' 

Plays 

1907     'The  Campden  Wonder.' 
,      1909     'The  Tragedy  of  Nan.' 
^y   1910    'The  Tragedy  of  Pompey  the  Great.' 
y^  '   1914     'PhiUp  the  King.' 
y        1915     'The  Faithful.' 

^         1916     'Good  Friday'  ('Fortnightly  Review,'  Dec.  1915). 
'The  Locked  Chest.' 
'^  'The  Sweeps  of  '98.' 

Tales  and  Novels 
'A  Mainsail  Haul.' 
'A  Tarpaulin  Muster.' 
'Captain  Margaret.' 
'  Multitude  and  Solitude.' 
'Lost  Endeavom:.' 
'The  Street  of  To-day.' 

Prose 

1911     'William  Shakespeare.' 
1916    'Gallipoli.' 

273 


19 


/:: 


274  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

RUPERT  BROOKE 

1911     'Poems.' 

1915  '  1914  and  other  Poems.' 

'The  Collected  Poems  of  Rupert  Brooke'  (New  York). 

1916  'Letters  from  America,'  with  a  preface  by  Hemy  James. 
1918     'The  Collected  Poems  of  Rupert  Brooke'  (London). 

There  are  short  essays  on  Rupert  Brooke  in  'Studies  of  Contem- 
porary Poets'  by  Mary  C.  Stiu-geon  (1916)  and  in  'Prose  Papers'  by 
John  Drinkwater  (1917). 

WILFRID  WILSON  GIBSON 


1907 

'Stonefolds.' 

1910 

'Akra  the  Slave.' 

'Daily  Bread.' 

1912 

'Fires.' 

1914 

'Thoroughfares.' 

'Borderlands.' 

1915 

'Battle.' 

1916 

'Friends.' 

1917 

'  Livelihood.' 

1918 

'Whin.' 

y 


WILLIAM  H.  DAVIES 
Poems 


1906 

'The  Soul's  Destroyer.' 

1907 

'New  Poems.' 

1908 

'  Nature  Poems.' 

^ 

1910 

'  Farewell  to  Poesy.' 

1911 

'Songs  of  Joy.' 

1913 

'Foliage.' 

^y 

1914 

'  The  Birds  of  Paradise.' 

^ 

1916 

'Child  Lovers.' 

y' 

'Collected  Poems.' 

^ 

Prose 

1907 

'The  Autobiography  of  a  Super-Tramp.' 

.*■■ 

1916 

'A  Pilgrim  in  Wales.' 

y  /- 

1918 

'A  Poet's  Pilgrimage.' 

THE  NEW  POETS  y^     275 


WALTER  DE  LA   MARE 


1902  'Songs  of  Childhood.' 

1904  'Henry  Brocken,'  a  romance. 

1906  'Poems.' 

1910  'The  Return,'  a  novel. 

1912  'The  Listeners,  and  other  Poems.' 

1913  'Peacock  Pie.' 

1918  *  Motley  and  other  Poems.' 

LASCELLES  ABERCROMBIE 

1908  'Interludes  and  Poems.' 

1910  'St.  Mary  and  the  Bramble.' 

1911  '  The  Sale  of  St.  Thomas.' 

1912  'Emblems  of  Love.' 

'Thomas  Hardy;  a  critical  study.' 

1913  'Deborah,  A  Play  in  three  acta.' 
'Speculative  Dialogues.' 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   NEW   NOVELISTS 

The  English  novel,  rich  as  it  is  in  great  names  and 
superb  achievement,  cannot  be  said  to  be  altogether 
fortunate  in  its  artistic  tradition.  George  Moore,  him- 
self a  competent  practitioner,  said  of  it  in  an  interview 
with  John  Lloyd  Balderston  published  in  the  'Fort- 
nightly Review'  for  October,  1917: — 

"  The  English  novel  remains  as  it  was  in  the  beginning — a  drawing- 
room  entertainment  addressed  chiefly  to  ladies.  Men  are  not  ex- 
pected to  put  their  best  thoughts  into  novels,  but  into  poetry  and 
into  essays,  and,  as  man  is  a  creature  of  habit,  the  novel  remains  the 
weakest  part  of  English  hterature.  The  ambition  of  the  Enghsh 
story-teller  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  to  amuse  the  drawing- 
room,  and  I  do  not  think  the  ambition  of  any  story-teller  since  has 
been  different." 

After  making  very  considerable  allowance  for  Moore's 
habitual  tendency  to  hyperbole,  one  must  admit  that 
there  is  a  germ  of  truth  in  what  he  says.  The  great 
masters,  from  Fielding  to  Dickens,  were  negligent  not 
merely  of  style  but  of  structure,  and  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury added  to  the  lax  artistic  traditions  of  the  eighteenth 
the  limitations  of  Victorian  prudishness.  The  attempts 
of  George  Eliot,  Meredith,  Galsworthy  and  Wells  to 
enrich  the  social  and  intellectual  content  of  the  novel 
left  it  still  somewhat  indeterminate  and  amorphous  as  a 
type.  The  efforts  of  the  younger  men  continued  to  be 
directed,  not  so  much  to  perfecting  the  form  of  the  novel 

276 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  277 

as  to  enlarging  its  scope.  The  evasions  and  reserves  of 
the  great  Victorians  as  to  sexual  passion  gave  place  to 
increasing  freedom  and  frankness,  until  illicit  love  came 
into  the  foreground  of  the  picture  and  was  portrayed, 
in  some  cases,  to  the  exclusion  of  almost  every  other 
interest.  Yet,  in  his  recent  book  on  the  novel,  W.  L. 
George  assures  us  that  the  British  novelist  has  noT^t 
attained  complete  freedom  in  dealing  with  matters  of 
sex,  which  still  play  a  much  larger  part  in  life  than  they 
do  in  fiction.  One  would  have  thought  that  the  dispro- 
portion at  present  was  the  other  way,  and  that  the 
novelists  had  rather  overdone  sex  psychology  in  com- 
parison with  some  of  the  other  interests  in  life — such  as 
war  and  earning  a  liveUhood — but  it  is  an  issue  on  which 
everyone  must  form  his  own  conclusion.  Galsworthy's 
'The_Dark  Flower'  and  'Beyond'  are  almo's?'  entirely 
taken  up  with  the  analysis  of  sexual  attraction,  and  there 
is  hardly  a  novel  of  his  into  which  this  element  does  not 
enter  to  a  very  large  extent.  Wells  deals  with  it  largely 
and  frankly,  in  some  novels  almosTexclusively.  Arnold 
Bennett  takes  one  aspect  of  it  for  the  main  theinS"  of 
'TKe  Pretty  Lady.'  W.  L.  George  himself  has  made  it 
in  one  phase  or  another  thS  exulUlsive  subject  of  '  A  Bed 
of  Roses'  and  'The  Second  Blooming.'  With  TTT^. 
Lawrence  it  is  almost  an  obsession,  and  the  brutal  frank- 
ness of  'The  Rainbow'  surely  reached  the  limits  of  the 
permissible.  Gilbert  Cannan  usually  puts  sex  interests, 
in  one  form  or  alaotlier,  in  the  foreground,  and  in  the 
work  of  Compton  Mackenzie  they  are  hardly  less  promi- 
nent. 'The  Early  Life  and  Adventures  of  Sylvia  Scar- 
lett '  prefaces  the  account  of  the  amatory  escapades  of  the 
heroine  with  a  review  of  those  of  her  mother  and  her 


f 


278  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

grandmother,  and  though  in  nearly  500  pages  her  own 
course  is  pursued  through  marriage,  divorce,  promiscuity, 
and  association  with  all  manner  of  vileness,  at  the  end 
we  are  promised  another  volume  in  which  Sylvia  will  be 
^,  "off  with  the  raggle-taggle  gipsies  in  deadly  earnest." 
Henry  James,  in  an  essay  on  'The  New  Novel'  (1914) 
which  has  already  become  a  classic,  commends  the  new 
/      V  novelists  for  their  courage  in  hugging  the  shore  of  the 
^  real  in  this  regard  instead  of  flying  to  the  open  sea  of 

sentiment  at  the  least  sign  of  difficulty.  Varying  his 
metaphor,  he  applauds  also  their  possession  of  and  satu- 
ration in  their  material: — 

■^,  "The  act  of  squeezing  out  to  the  utmost  the  plump  and  more  or 
jf  less  juicy  orange  of  a  particular  acquainted  state  and  letting  thia 
affirmation  of  energy,  however  directed  or  undirected,  constitute  for 
them  the  'treatment'  of  a  theme — ihal  is  what  we  remark  them  as 
mainly  engaged  in.  .  .  .  Nothing  is  further  from  our  thought 
than  to  imdervalue  saturation  and  possession,  the  fact  of  the  partic- 
ular experience,  the  state  and  degree  of  acquaintance  incurred,  how- 
ever such  a  consciousness  may  have  been  determined;  for  these 
things  represent  on  the  part  of  the  novelist,  as  on  the  part  of  any 
painter  of  things  seen,  felt  or  imagined,  just  one  half  of  his  authority 
— the  other  half  being  represented  of  course  by  the  apphcation  he  is 
inspired  to  make  of  them.  Therefore  that  fine  secured  half  is  so 
much  gained  at  the  start,  and  the  fact  of  its  brightly  being  there  may 
really  by  itself  project  upon  the  course  so  much  colour  and  form  as 
to  make  us  on  occasion,  xmder  the  genial  force,  almost  not  miss  the 
answer  to  the  question  of  apphcation." 

The  question  of  application,  however,  cannot  be 
avoided,  for  even  on  the  "shce  of  life"  theory  the  prin- 
ciple of  selection  is  involved.  There  can  be  no  such 
thing  as  an  amorphous  slice;  it  has  been  horn  of  naught 
else  but  measured  excision.  Reasons  have  been  the 
fairies  waiting  on  its  cradle: — 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  279 

"How  can  a  slice  of  life  be  anything  but  illustrational  of  the  loaf, 
and  how  can  illustration  not  immediately  bristle  with  every  sign  of 
the  extracted  and  related  state?  The  relation  is  at  once  to  what  the 
thing  comes  from  and  to  what  it  waits  upon — ^which  last  is  our  act  of 
recognition.  We  accordingly  appreciate  it  in  proportion  as  it  so 
accounts  for  itself;  the  quantity  and  the  intensity  of  its  reference  are 
the  measure  of  our  knowledge  of  it." 

What  then  Henry  James  finds  missing  in  the  new 
novelists  is  treatment,  composition,  structure,  fusion,  a 
centre  of  interest,  and  he  ascribes  this  to  the  pernicious 
influence  of  Tolstoy,  "the  great  illustrative  master-hand 
on  all  this  ground  of  the  disconnection  of  method  from 
matter." 

"  In  an  incisive  article  in  the  London  '  Nation '  published 
soon  after  Henry  James's^ssay,  his  judgment  of  the  facts 
is  admitted,  but  a  different  explanation  is  suggested. 
The  new  novels  are  "social  documents,  imaginative  his- 
tory, crusades,  reactions,  biology,  or  natural  science," 
but  they  are  not  works  of  art;  they  lack  style,  and  they 
lack  form.  Their  accumulation  of  material  circum- 
stance is  "the  inevitable  result  of  the  autobiographical 
obsession  obtruding  upon  the  critical,  the  measuring,  the 
selective  faculty.  The  energy  of  an  unconscious  self- 
expression  is  too  much  for  them." 

This  is  an  interesting  theory,  and  it  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  cite  particular  novels  or  parts  of  novels  which  lend 
it  support,  but  it  is  hardly  tenable  in  view  of  the  variety 
of  the  work  of  the  new  novehsts,  or  even  the  variety  of  the 
work  of  any  one  of  them.  Every  novelist  reproduces 
more  or  less  indirectly  his  own  experience  and  observa- 
tion. De  Maupassant,  one  of  the  most  objective  of 
writers  of  fiction,  says : — 


280  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"We  can  only  vary  our  characters  by  altering  the  age,  the  sex,  the 
social  position  and  aU  the  circumstances  of  life  of  that  ego  which 
nature  has  in  fact  enclosed  in  an  unsurmountable  barrier  of  organs  of 
sense.  SkiU  consists  in  not  betraying  this  ego  to  the  reader,  under 
the  various  masks  which  we  employ  to  cover  it." 

Here  and  there  in  the  work  of  the  new  novelists,  one 
may  discern  (as  in  the  work  of  their  predecessors)  auto- 
biography more  or  less  assimilated  to  the  artistic  purpose 
they  have  in  view;  but  the  charge  of  unassimilated  auto- 
biography cannot  be  brought  with  justice  against  their 
work  as  a  whole,  or,  indeed  against  that  of  any  particular 
author.  The  characteristic  of  the  new  novels  of  which 
both  Henry  James  and  the  '  Nation '  critic  complain  may 
have  still  another  explanation.  What  Henry  James 
condemns  as  a  disregard  of  the  essential  principles  of  art 
and  what  the  alternative  view  holds  to  be  unconscious 
self-absorption  may  be  really  a  deliberate  effort  to  pro- 
duce the  effect  of  the  variety — even  the  haphazard  con- 
fusion— of  life.  The  grouping  of  character  and  circum- 
stance round  a  central  theme  may  be  an  aim  they  have 
not  merely  not  endeavoured  to  attain,  but  have  con- 
sciously striven  to  avoid,  and  to  criticize  them  for  not 
reaching  it  is  simply  to  disapprove  of  the  theory  of  art 
they  have  taken  over,  either  from  the  older  English 
novelists  or  from  the  Russians.  Fortunately  we  have,  in 
Hugh  Walpole's  little  book  about  Joseph  Conrad,  a 
statement  (by  one  of  themselves)  of  the  aims  and  models 
the  new  novehsts  had  in  view.     He  says : — 

"The  influence  of  the  French  novel,  which  was  at  its  strongest 
between  the  years  of  1885  and  1895,  was  towards  Realism,  and  the 
influence  of  the  Russian  novel,  which  has  certainly  been  very  strongly 
marked  in  England  during  the  last  years,  is  all  towards  Romantic- 
Realism.    If  we  wished  to  know  exactly  what  is  meant  by  Romantic- 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  281 

Realism,  Buch  a  novel  as  'The  Brothers  Karamazov,'  such  a  play  as 
'The  Cherry  Orchard'  are  there  before  us,  as  the  best  possible  exam- 
ples. We  might  say,  in  a  word,  that  'Karamazov'  has,  in  the  Eng- 
land of  1915,  taken  the  place  that  was  occupied,  in  1890,  by '  Madame 
Bovary.' " 

Now  'Madame  Bovary'  is  exactly  the  treatment  of  "a 
case"  according  to  the  method  Henry  James,  in  theory 
and  practice,  approved;  the  looser  structure  of  the 
Russian  authors  Walpole  mentions — if  indeed  it  can  be 
called  structure  at  all — is  that  adopted  ,by  the  younger 
English  school.  That  Henry  James  should  find  them 
lacking  in  this  respect  is  not  surprising;  but  his  criticism 
goes  back  to  a  discussion  of  the  fundamental  principles  of 
the  art  of  fiction  to  which  there  is  no  end.  We  may  regret 
that  the  new  novelists  were  apparently  so  little  interested 
in  the  form  of  their  work,  or,  if  one  agrees  with  Henry 
James,  that  they  were  influenced  by  the  evil  example  of 
the  Russians,  but  obviously  we  must  take  them  for  what 
they  are,  since  it  is  fruitless  to  condemn  them  for  what 
they  are  not.  There  will  certainly  be  those  who  will  con- 
tend that  in  spite  of  the  apparent  lack  of  a  central  interest, 
there  is  a  subtler  unity  to  be  discerned,  and  that  this 
more  delicate  and  fluid  creation  represents  a  higher 
artistic  standard  than  the  more  obvious  and  artificial 
construction  of  the  older  French  school.  The  apparent 
formlessness  which  the  older  English  novelists  enjoyed 
in  the  innocence  of  childhood  may  be  adopted  by  the 
latest  exponents  of  the  art  not  from  thoughtlessness,  or 
lack  of  skill,  or  unconscious  self-absorption,  but  from 
deliberate  design. 


I 


282  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

HUGH  WALPOLE    (1884-        )    --^^^ 

Walpole's  father  became  Bishop  of  Edinburgh  in  1910, 
after  holding  the  incumbency  of  St.  Mary's  Pro-Cathe- 
dral, Auckland,  New  Zealand,  1882-9,  and  the  professor- 
ship of  dogmatic  theology  in  the  General  Theological 
Seminary,  New  York,  1889-96.  Hugh  Seymour  Walpole 
(to  give  him  his  full  name)  is  presumably  the  "Hugh 
Seymour"  of  'The  Golden  Scarecrow,'  who  "was  sent 
from  Ceylon,  where  his  parents  lived,  to  be  educated  in 
England.  His  relations  having,  for  the  most  part, 
settled  in  foreign  countries,  he  spent  his  holidays  as  a 
minute  and  pale-faced  'paying  guest'  in  various  houses 
where  other  children  were  of  more  importance  than  he, 
or  where  children  as  a  race  were  of  no  importance  at  all." 

"Hugh  Seymour"  is  described  by  his  creator  (or 
biographer)  as  a  short-sighted,  sensitive  child  who  did 
not  care  very  greatly  for  reading  but  told  himself  long 
stories  of  "trains  of  elephants,  ropes  and  ropes  of  pearls, 
towers  of  ivory,  peacocks,  and  strange  meals  of  saffron 
buns,  roast  chicken,  and  gingerbread.  He  was  bullied  at 
school  until  his  appointment  as  his  dormitory's  story- 
teller gave  him  a  certain  status." 

Cornwall  is  dimly  suggested  as  the  scene  of  this  story 
of  childhood,  and  Cornwall  was  certainly  the  scene  of  the 
three  "studies  in  place"  (as  he  afterwards  called  them) 
with  which  Walpole  began  his  literary  career.  His  most 
successful  novel,  'The  Duchess  of  Wrexe,'  was  written  at 
Polperro  in  that  county,  August  1912-January  1914, 
and  the  author's  fondness  for  its  romantic  coast  may  be 
connected  with  family  friendships  formed  by  his  father 
as  tutor  at  the  Chancellor's  School  at  Truro  1877-82. 
But  this  was  before  Hugh  Walpole  was  born,  and  one 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  283 

may  be  very  sure  that  it  was  neither  this  school  nor  i 

King's  School,   Canterbury,  at  which  he  himself  was  f 
educated,  that  stood  for  model  for  the  third  and  most 
remarkable  of  his  "studies  of  place" — 'Mr.  Perrin  and 

Mr.   Traill.'     "Moffatt's"   is   a  second   rate   boarding  ^ 

school  for  middle-class  boys,  presented  from  the  point  of  . 
view  of  the  staff,  one  of  whom  thus  describes  the  type : —  /^ 

"There  are  thousands  of  them  all  over  the  country — ^places  where 
the  men  are  underpaid,  with  no  prospects,  herded  together,  all  of 
them  hating  each  other,  wanting,  perhaps,  towards  the  end  of  term, 
to  cut  each  other's  throats.  You  must  not  be  friends  with  the  Head, 
because  then  we  shall  think  that  you  are  spying  on  us.  You  must 
not  be  friends  with  us,  because  then  the  Head  will  hear  of  it,  and  will 
immediately  hate  you  because  he  will  think  that  you  are  conspiring 
against  him.  You  must  not  be  friends  with  the  boys,  because  then 
we  shall  all  hate  you  and  they  will  despise  you.  You  will  be  quite 
alone.     .     .     . 

"Here  we  are — fifteen  men — all  hating  each  other,  loathing  every- 
thing that  the  other  man  does — the  way  he  eats,  the  way  he  moves, 
the  way  he  teaches.  We  sleep  next  door  to  each  other,  we  eat  to- 
gether, we  meet  all  day  until  late  at  night — hating  each  other." 

The  situation  is,  one  hopes,  not  typical — the  speaker 
is  a  disappointed  and  embittered  man — but  it  is  a  possible 
one  where  a  small  number  of  overworked,  nervous  and 
uncongenial  teachers  are  cooped  up  together  under  an 
unsympathetic  or  selfseeking  Headmaster.  It  is  worked 
out  in  the  story,  perhaps  with  an  undue  indulgence  in 
physical  violence,  but  with  undoubted  power.  The  life 
of  the  teaching  staff  is  presented  skilfully  and  forcefully, 
their  petty  cares,  squabbles,  and  resentments,  and  the 
most  guilty  of  them  (always  omitting  the  unspeakable 
Headmaster  who  looms  in  the  background  as  the  evil 
genius  of  the  scene)  is  represented  as  a  victim  of  under- 
pay, over  work,  and  overstrained  nerves.     Conditions 


/ 


284  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

have  improved  in  schools  of  this  type  since  the  story  was 
written,  but  the  lot  of  the  secondary  school  teacher  is  still 
far  from  what  it  should  be,  either  for  his  own  sake  or  for 
those  under  his  care,  and  Walpole  did  a  public  service  in 
drawing  attention  to  it  so  effectively. 

Walpole's  story  of  university  life,  'The  Prelude  to 
Adventure,'  owes  merely  its  external  machinery  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  at  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge.  It  is 
classed  by  him  as  a  '  prologue ' — to  what,  is  not  clear.  It 
is  the  story  of  the  murder  of  one  undergraduate  by  an- 
other— a  murder  inexplicably  committed,  inexplicably 
undiscovered,  inexplicably  confessed,  and  inexplicably 
condoned.  Even  as  a  study  of  the  external  conditions 
of  university  life  it  has  very  slight  value. 

The  other  prologue,  'Fortitude' — though  again  one 
does  not  see  to  what,  unless  Walpole  had  in  mind  the 
writing  of  a  continuation — is  a  very  much  firmer  and 
stronger  piece  of  work.  The  scene  is  mainly  in  Cornwall 
or  in  London,  and  there  is  a  wealth  of  well-conceived 
characters.  The  theme  of  the  story  is  set  forth  in  the 
opening  sentence: — "  'Tisn't  life  that  matters!  'Tis  the 
courage  you  bring  to  it, "  and  the  plot  follows  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  hero,  Peter  Westcott,  from  boyhood  to  man- 
hood, in  his  conflicts  with  various  antagonists,  without 
and  within.  We  leave  him  almost  vanquished,  baffled 
but  triumphant,  for  he  is  still  fighting,  and  the  work  as  a 
whole  attains  the  effect  aimed  at,  in  addition  to  many 
excellent  strokes  in  detail. 

'The  Duchess  of  Wrexe'  had  also  an  ambitious  theme. 
The  Duchess  herself  is  an  excellent  character  study,  but 
beyond  this  Walpole  aimed  at  the  portrayal  of  a  disap- 
pearing class — the  Autocrats. 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  285 

"You  mtist  have  your  quarterings,  and  you  must  look  down  on  | 
those  who  haven't.  But,  more  than  that,  everything  must  be  pre- 
served, and  continual  ceremonies,  dignities,  chastities,  restraints, 
pomps  and  circumstances.  Above  all,  no  one  must  be  admitted 
within  the  company  who  is  not  of  the  noblest,  the  stupidest,  the 
narrowest." 

The  Duchess  is  beaten,  and  at  the  end  of  the  story  we 
are  given  a  glimpse  of  the  rising  city  of  the  new  age — 
"instead  of  this  old  house,  the  hooded  furniture,  the  anger 
at  all  freedom  of  thought,  the  jealousy  of  all  enterprise, 
the  slander  and  the  malice,  an  age  of  a  universal  Brother- 
hood, of  unselfishness,  restraint,  charity,  tolerance" — 
but  upon  this  prospect  descended  the  curtain  of  the  War, 
and  Walpole  went  off  to  Russia  to  serve  with  the  Russian 
Red  Cross,  1914-16.  The  outcome  was  'The  Dark  |j 
Forest* — a  romantic  treatment  of  his  experienceslSll  the  A 
itusSfSft  front,  done  in  the  Russian  manner.  It  was 
greatly  admired,  perhaps  most  of  all  by  those  who  took 
on  hearsay  the  great  Russian  models  which  it  was  sup- 
posed to  follow  and  which  in  fact  it  followed  more  in 
form  than  in  spirit,  as  is  generally  the  case  with  deliberate 
imitations. 

'The  Green  Mirror,'  which  resumed  the  series  of  'The 
Rising  "City,'  was  again  a  study  of  London  life,  with  a 
tyrannical  mother,  entrenched  in  family  tradition  and, 
like  the  Duchess,  ultimately  defeated,  as  its  central  figure. 
It  is  remarkable  as  an  analysis  of  a  small  section  of  the 
upper  middle  class  in  England,  but  suffered  somewhat  in 
interest  from  the  restriction  of  the  field  and  the  lack  of 
vitality  of  all  but  the  principal  character.  Walpole  has 
already  shown  conspicuous  talent,  but  he  gives  the  im- 
pression of  being  capable  of  greater  work  than  any  he  has 
yet  done.     He  has  high  artistic  ambitions,  and  his  steady 


/» 


286  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

advance  in  power,  in  spite  of  some  fluctuations,  affords 
substantial  ground  for  the  expectation  of  really  great 
achievements  in  the  future. 

GILBERT  CANNAN   (1884-       ^ 

Gilbert  Cannan  was  educated  at  the  University  of 
Manchester  and  King's  College,  Cambridge,  read  for 
the  Bar,  and  served  a  brief  apprenticeship  to  the  writer's 
craft  as  dramatic  critic  for  the  London '  Star, '  1909-10.  He 
was  also  engaged  in  the  translation  (1910-13)  of  'Jean 
Christophe'  by  Romain  Holland,  who,  along  with  Samuel 
Butler,  of  whom  Cannan  published  a  critical  study  in 
1915,  had  considerable  influence  upon  his  original  novels. 
In  the  critical  study  of  Butler  he  sets  forth  his  own  ideas 
of  what  the  English  novel  should  be  :— 

"Irony  is  one  of  the  essential  ingredients  of  your  true  novel, which 
is  a  special  species  distinct  from  the  romance,  and  begins  with  the 
application  in  'Don  Quixote'  of  irony  to  romance.  A  novel  is  an 
epic  with  its  wings  cUpped,  that  is,  with  its  action  and  characters 
viewed  ironcally .  The  modern  story  in  which  action  and  characters 
are  viewed  sentimentally  is  not,  properly  speaking,  a  novel  at  all.  .  . 
As  for  the  story  in  which  action  and  characters  are  regarded  only  in 
relation  to  pohtical  and  sociological  considerations,  that  is  a  fearful 
wild-fowl,  wingless,  featherless,  strange  and  indecent." 

As  to  form,  he  says  more  specifically  elsewhere : — 

"The  happy,  leisurely  technique  of  Fielding  is  unsuited  to  the  pur- 
poses of  the  modem  novel.  The  French  technique  is  too  rigorous, 
the  Russian  too  large  for  our  insular  temper.  Besides,  as  we  axe 
insisting  upon  our  character  and  striving  to  retrieve  it,  aU  that  we 
learn  or  borrow  must  be  assimilated  to  it.  Easy  imitation  lends  itself 
too  readily  to  our  deplorable  sentimentaUty,  and  adds  to  our  enor- 
mous pile  of  too-easily-written  books.  .  .  .  Our  own  writers  are 
either  too  near  their  emotions  or  too  near  their  facts.  They  cannot 
arrange  both  in  due  proportion  in  their  fable,  yet  they  laboiu*  with 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  287 

such  astonishing  zest  and  hopefvdness  that  it  is  not  unreasonable  to 
be  sanguine  as  to  the  creation  of  a  form  and  a  technique  which  will 
make  it  possible  for  a  whole  generation  to  produce  richly." 

Cannan  tried  the  Butler  manner  in  'Little  Brother,' 
*  Old  Mole  'and '  Old  Mole's  Novel,'  without  any  great  suc- 
cess, for  he  had  not  Butler's  stock  of  original  ideas  or  his 
quizzical  humour,  but  in  'Round  the  Corner,'  although  it 
has  an  obvious  relation  to  The  "Way  of  all  Flesh,'  he 
achieved  a  more  independent  and  original  piece  of  work, 
conscientious,  if  not  inspired.  He  was  much  more  success- 
ful in '  Mendel,'  though  here  again  there  is  an  unconcealed 
indebtedness  to  'Jean  Christophe,'  which  is  more  than 
once  referred  to  in  lEe  course  of  the  book.  But  in  this 
instance  Cannan  surpassed  his  model,  avoiding  the 
longueurs  of  the  French  original  and  keeping  the  talk 
about  art  within  much  severer  bounds  than  Jean  Chris- 
tqphe's  interminable  divagations  about  music.  Cannan's 
young  Jewish  painter  is  also  a  more  original  conception 
than  Remain  Rolland's  hero,  and  his  father,  mother  and 
brothers  are  all  admirably  realized.  The  arrival  of  this 
family  of  Polish  Jews  in  London  and  their  settlement  in 
Whitechapel  is  wonderfully  described,  and  their  attitude 
to  the  London  life  they  touch  only  at  a  few  points  (chiefly 
of  pain  and  discomfort)  is  consistently  maintained 
throughout.  They  are  weird  people,  according  to  Eng- 
Hsh  notions,  and  yet  Cannan  has  made  them  entirely 
comprehensible,  and  even  likeable,  especially  the  abso- 
lutely Jewish  father  and  mother.  The  half  Jewish  chil- 
dren become  less  sympathetic;  the  hero's  character  is 
very  carefully  worked  out,  with  its  oriental  passion  only 
veneered  by  the  manners  and  ideas  he  acquires  from  the 
English  people  he  meets  in  his  artistic  career,  but  in 


288  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

\  vitality  and  solidity  the  figure  of  the  mother,  with  her 

I  strong  affection,  limited  ideas,  and  shrewd  observations, 
is  the  masterpiece  of  the  book.  The  English  painters, 
art-students  and  models  are  much  thinner  and  more 
shadowy  figures,  and  they  are  not  made  any  more  real  by 
a  constant  insistence  on  their  fondness  for  sensual  indul- 
gence or  their  dislike  of  it.  This  element  of  the  novel 
seems  to  be  developed  out  of  all  proportion  to  other  inter- 
ests. The  physical  attraction  exercised  by  Nelly  OUver 
for  Logan  is  laboured  to  an  extent  and  to  a  degree  of  de- 
tail hardly  justified  either  by  the  conflict  between  this 
narrow  and  degrading  passion  and  the  wider  interest  of 
his  friendship  for  Mendel,  or  by  the  contrast  between  this 
fleshly  bond  and  the  higher  spiritual  relation  between 
Greta  Morrison  and  the  hero.  It  is  an  excellent  moral, 
but  it  does  not  seem  worth  while  to  go  through  so  much 
slime  for  the  sake  of  so  little.  The  Hetty  Finch  episode, 
though  more  closely  connected  with  the  fortunes  of  the 
hero  and  commendably  shorter,  is  hardly  significant 
enough  to  save  it  from  becoming  wearisome.  But  when 
all  deductions  are  made,  *  Mendel '  is  a  powerful  novel  and 
exhibits  with  vivid  reahty,  both  in  the  scenes  in  the 
Mendel  home  and  in  those  of  the  studios  and  the  artists' 
caf6s,  sides  of  life  little  known  to  English  fiction. 

COMPTON   MACKENZIE   (1883-        ) 

Compton  Mackenzie,  whose  parents  were  well  known 
and  highly  esteemed  under  their  stage  names  of  Edmund 
Compton  and  Virginia  Bateman,  showed  early  signs  of 
literary  versatihty.  He  had  become  an  editor  (of  the  'Ox- 
ford Point  of  View')  before  he  left  Magdalen  College  in 
1904,  and  within  a  few  years  after  had  produced  a  comedy. 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  289 

published  a  volume  of  poems,  and  written  an  Alhambra 
revue.  After  his  marriage  he  retired  to  Cornwall,  and 
from  this  rustic  seclusion  sent  his  first  novel,  'The  Pas- 
sionate Elopement,'  to  one  publisher  after  another  until 
it  was  accepted  in  1911  and  scored  an  immediate  success. 
It  is  "an  eighteenth  century  exercise  in  concentration  and 
flexibility,"  and  gives  little  hint  of  the  very  different 
style  and  manner  he  adopted  in  'Carnival.'  This  is  a 
realistic  study  of  the  Ufe  and  character,  especially  in  her 
childhood  and  youth,  of  a  London  ballet  girl,  conducted 
with  admirable  skill  and  verve  until  the  author  whisks 
her  away  from  the  glare  of  the  footlights  to  meet  an  un- 
timely death  by  the  Cornish  sea.  There  seems  no  call  or 
excuse  for  this  hurried  ending,  as  the  character  might 
just  as  well  have  been  taken  over,  as  some  of  the  others 
were,  into  the  author's  subsequent  work.  His  plan  of 
detailed  reaUstic  incident  demands  extensive  space,  and 
though  it  is  difficult  to  bring  a  novel  written  on  this  scale 
to  a  satisfactory  conclusion,  sudden  death  is  not  a  solu- 
tion of  the  problem.  The  story  really  breaks  into  two 
parts,  and  the  second  part  is  out  of  proportion  and  out  of 
tone  with  the  first. 

In  'Sinister  Street'  the  novelist  took  a  much  larger 
canvas  and  found  himself  more  at  ease.  The  two  parts 
relate  with  abundant  detail  the  childhood  and  youth, 
school  days  and  love-affairs  of  Michael  and  Stella  Fane, 
the  offspring  of  an  irregular  union  in  the  English  upper 
class.  The  development  of  the  characters  of  the  two 
children  under  their  peculiar  social  conditions  is  wonder- 
fully done,  and  the  conflict  in  Michael's  nature  between 
the  sensualist  and  the  ascetic  is  movingly  presented. 
'Guy  and  PauHne'  is  a  detached  idyll  arising  out  of 


f 


1 


290  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Michael's  life  at  Oxford,  but  even  at  the  end  of  this  third 
novel  the  young  people,  after  rich  and  varied  experiences, 
are  left  still  at  the  beginning  of  their  careers.  The 
author's  task  was  twice  interrupted,  in  1913  by  a  physical 
breakdown,  which  drove  him  to  Capri  for  a  rest,  and  in 
1915  by  volunteering  for  the  ill-fated  expedition  to  the 
Dardanelles.  In  'Sylvia  Scarlett'  he  made  a  fresh  start, 
with  an  entirely  new  set  of  characters,  but  about  halfway 
through  the  book  the  old  ones  begin  to  come  back  again, 
and  by  the  end  it  is  evident  that  the  real  crisis  in  the  lives 
of  Michael  Fane  and  Sylvia  Scarlett  is  still  to  come. 
There  seems  no  reason  why  the  author  should  not  con- 
tinue their  experiences  through  half  a  dozen  novels  more. 
The  detailed  method  adopted  by  Compton  Mackenzie 
has  obvious  dangers,  and  he  does  not  altogether  escape 
them.  He  has  inexhaustible  inventiveness  of  incident, 
but  his  versatility  betrays  him  at  times  into  the  irrelevant 
and  the  insignificant — not  the  loose,  easy-going  scheme 
of  the  Russians,  which  is  not  at  all  motiveless,  but  the 
merely  episodical  manner  of  Smollett,  the  multiplica- 
tion of  incident  for  its  own  sake.  Take  for  instance  the 
battle  royal  between  two  of  Sylvia's  early  lowers,  in  the 
course  of  which  Danny  Lewis  knocks  Jay  Cohen  into  a 
slop-pail: — 

"  Danny  kicked  off  the  slop-pail,  and  invited  Cohen  to  stand  up  to 
him;  but  when  he  did  get  on  his  feet,  he  ran  to  the  door  and  reached 
the  stairs  just  as  Mrs.  Gonner  was  wearily  ascending  to  find  out  what 
was  happening.  He  tried  to  stop  himseK  by  clutching  the  knob  of 
the  baluster,  which  broke;  the  result  was  that  he  dragged  Mrs.  Gon- 
ner with  him  in  a  glissade  which  ended  behind  the  counter.  The  con- 
fusion in  the  shop  became  general:  Mr.  Gonner  cut  his  thumb,  and 
the  sight  of  the  blood  caused  a  woman  who  was  eating  a  sausage  to 
choke;  another  customer  took  advantage  of  the  row  to  snatch  a  side 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  291 

of  bacon  and  try  to  escape,  but  another  customer  with  a  finer  moral 
sense  prevented  him;  a  dog,  who  was  sniSing  in  the  entrance,  saw  the 
bacon  on  the  floor  and  tried  to  seize  it,  but  getting  his  tail  trodden 
upon  by  somebody,  he  took  fright  and  bit  a  small  boy,  who  was 
waiting  to  change  a  shilling  into  coppers." 

In  the  midst  of  the  hubbub,  Sylvia  makes  her  escape, 
but  one  fails  to  see  what  all  this  has  to  do  with  the  devel- 
opment of  her  character  or  what  influence  it  has  on  her 
future  career.  It  may  excite  the  laughter  of  the  ground- 
lings, but  it  makes  the  judicious  grieve,  for  the  author  had 
shown  himself  capable  of  better  things.  '  Sinister  Street ' 
is  a  very  solid  and  remarkable  accomplishment  for  a 
novelist  of  Compton  Mackenzie's  years  and  experience, 
and  it  is  distressing  to  see  any  falling  off,  even  tempo- 
rarily, from  the  high  standard  he  there  set  himself  and 
successfully  achieved. 

D.  H.  LAWRENCE   (1887-        )  yJ^     j}- 

In  the  introduction  to  'The  Widowing  of  Mrs.  Hoi-,'    :3*  x 
royd,'  Edwin  Bjorkman  gives  some  interesting  particu-    ^ 
lars  of  Lawrence's  early  struggles  towards  authorship.     / 
He  was  born  in  a  coalminer's  cottage  on  the  borders  of 
Nottinghamshire  and  Derbyshire — the  scene  in  which  all 
his  best  work  is  cast.     His  mother  was  a  woman  of 
character  and  refinement  and  some  education,  and  en- 
couraged the  boy  to  win  a  scholarship  at  Nottingham 
High  School,  which  he  left  at  sixteen  to  becoiiSe  a  pupil- 
teacher  in  an  elementary  school,  receiving  instruction 
from  the  headmaster  before  and  after  the  day's  work. 
From  twenty-one  to  twenty-three  he  was  a  student  at 
the  Nottingham  Day  Training  College,  and  he  taught 
school  for  a  while  in  London  until  he  got  his  first  two 
novels  published. 


292  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

'The  White  Peacock, '  Lawrence's  first  novel,  is  a  work 
of  promise  rather  than  of  performance.  He  writes  well — 
in  descriptive  passages,  such  as  this: — 

"I  was  bom  in  September,  and  love  it  best  of  all  the  months. 
There  is  no  heat,  no  hurry,  no  thirst  and  weariness  in  com  harvest 
as  there  is  in  the  hay.  If  the  season  is  late,  as  is  usual  with  us,  then 
mid-September  sees  the  com  still  standing  in  stook.  The  mornings 
come  slowly.  The  earth  is  like  a  woman  married  and  fading;  she 
does  not  leap  up  with  a  laugh  for  the  first  fresh  kiss  of  dawn,  but 
slowly,  quietly,  imexpectantly  lies  watching  the  waking  of  each  new 
day.  The  blue  mist,  like  memory  in  the  eyes  of  a  neglected  wife, 
never  goes  from  the  wooded  hill,  and  only  at  noon  creeps  from  the 
near  hedges.  There  is  no  bird  to  put  a  song  in  the  throat  of  morning ; 
only  the  crow's  voice  speaks  during  the  day.  Perhaps  there  is  the 
regular  breathing  hush  of  the  scythe — even  the  fretful  jar  of  the  mow- 
ing machine.  But  next  day,  in  the  morning,  all  is  still  again.  The 
lying  com  is  wet,  and  when  you  have  boimd  it,  and  lift  the  heavy 
sheaf  to  make  the  stook,  the  tresses  of  oats  wreathe  rovmd  each  other 
and  droop  mournfully." 

But  in  this  first  book  he  has  no  command  of  dialogue 
or  perhaps  not  enough  knowledge  of  how  educated  people 
talk.  The  teller  of  the  story  reports  himself  as  saying  to 
a  girl  about  her  eyes: — "To  have  such  soft,  vulnerable 
eyes  as  you  used  makes  one  feel  nervous  and  irascible. 
But  you  have  clothed  over  the  sensitiveness  of  yours, 
haven't  you? — Uke  naked  life,  naked  defenceless  pro- 
toplasm they  were,  is  it  not  so?  "  This  is  a  conversation 
between  two  young  people  in  a  Nottinghamshire  public 
house  parlour,  and  after  this  we  are  Bot  surprised  that 
they  "  drifted  into  a  discussion  of  Strauss  and  Debussy  " — 
whom  the  noveUst  (or  his  proof  reader)  did  not  yet  know 
well  enough  to  spell  the  name  correctly.  In  the  same 
chapter  the  servant  makes  the  hero  think  of  "the  girl 
in  Tchekoff's  story,"  and  an  old  woman  lying  in  a  bed 


THE  NEW  NOVELISTS  293 

of  Guy  de  Maupassant's  'Toine.'  Lawrence  had  been 
doing  a  lot  of  reading  in  London  and  he  had  not  yet 
digested  it. 

His  second  novel,  'The  Trespasser/  is  written  in  an 
easier  style,  but  is  an  ordinary  story  of  an  irregular  love 
affair  ending  in  suicide.  It  was  only  in  his  third  novel, 
'Sons  and  Lovers,'  that  he  struck  back  to  the  memories 
of  liis  childhood  and  the  speech  of  his  youth.  His  mother 
had  died  just  before  his  first  novel  was  published — the 
great  disappointment  of  his  life — and  it  was  no  doubt 
her  memory  that  inspired  the  central  figure  of  Mrs.  Morel, 
who  is,  perhaps  unnecessarily  (for  the  purposes  of  the 
story),  enriched  with  an  education  unusual  in  a  collier's 
cottage.  But  once  this  little  improbability  is  overcome, 
the  fortunes  of  the  Morel  family  are  unrolled  with  un- 
common skill  and  power.  The  father — drunken,  some- 
times violent — is  not  without  features  that  make  him 
human  and  natural;  the  mother  is  magnificently  realized. 
The  dialogue,  now  chiefly  dialect,  reproduces  with  as- 
tonishing verve  and  colour  the  forthright,  picturesque 
colloquialism  of  the  collier  folk.  Miriam,  the  farmer's 
daughter  who  discusses  Michael  Angelo  and  reads  Bau- 
delaire and  Verlaine,  is  less  real;  and  Clara,  who  plays 
profane  love  to  Miriam's  spirituality,  is  a  fleshly  woman 
— nothing  more — but  the  children  of  the  Morel  house- 
hold are  astonishingly  real  and  vivid.  One  is  a  little 
disappointed  that  the  eldest,  William,  should  be  so  sud- 
denly cut  off  after  winning  our  intense  interest,  but  his 
brother  Paul  takes  his  place  in  the  reader's  as  well  as  in 
his  mother's  heart.  Her  consuming  affection  for  him, 
her  jealousy  of  other  women,  her  absolute  devotion 
masking  itself  under  ordinary  sayings  and  doings,  is  a 


l( 


294  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

triumph  of  feeling  and  expression,  and  in  the  last  crisis 
of  her  death  the  noveUst  finds  for  the  stricken  son  the 
words  of  utter  simphcity  and  sincerity — the  cry  of  the 
heart. 

I  It  is  so  great  an  achievement  that  one  half  fears  that 
Lawrence  may  remain  the  author  of  one  masterpiece. 
'The  Rainbow, '  also  cast  in  the  Nottinghamshire  border, 
this^ime  among  the  farmers,  has  nothing  like  the  grip 
the  novehst  had  shown  of  the  more  familiar  material  in 
the  colliery  village;  and  it  developed  to  excess  the  physical 
aspect  of  passion  which  had  been  dealt  with,  though  only 
as  an  episode,  in  the  greater  novel.  Lawrence's  poetry 
shows  that  this  is  a  part  of  his  genius,  and  he  uses  it  for 
artistic  purposes;  the  effect  is  often  unpleasant,  but  it  is 
probably  only  in  England  that  it  would  bring  an  author 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  pohce  court.  'The  Rain- 
bow' was  destroyed  by  magisterial  order. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
HUGH  WALPOLE 


1909 

'The  Wooden  Horse.' 

1910 

'Mannaduke  at  Forty.' 

1911 

*  Mr.  Perrin  and  Mr.  Traill.' 

y^ 

1912 

'The  Prelude  to  Adventure.' 

y 

1913 

'Fortitude.' 

1914 

'The  Duchess  of  Wrexe.' 

1915 

'The  Golden  Scarecrow.* 

, 

1916 

'The  Dark  Forest.' 

^j- " 

1918 

'The  Green  Mirror.' 

>" 


GILBERT  CANNAN 

1909  '  Peter  Homunculus.' 

1910  'Devious  Ways.' 
1910-13    'John  Christopher.'     (Translation.) 

1912  'Little  Brother.' 

1913  '  Round  the  Comer.' 

1914  'Old  Mole.' 

'Old  Mole's  Novel.' 

1915  'Young  Earnest.' 

1916  'Mendel.' 

1917  '  The  Stucco  House.* 

1918  'Mummery.' 

COMPTON  MACKENZIE 

1907    'Poems.' 

1911  'The  Passionate  Elopement.' 

1912  'Carnival.' 

1913  *]Sinister  Street,'  Vol.  1. 
•^^      1914    'Sinister  Street,'  Vol.  2. 

''       1915     'Guy  and  Pauline.' 
1918     'Sylvia  Scarlett.' 

296 


y 


296  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

D.  H.  LAWRENCE 

'The  White  Peacock.' 

'The  Trespasser.' 

'  Sons  and  Lovers.' 

'The  Widowing  of  Mrs.  Hokoyd,  a  drama  in  three  acts.* 

*The  Prussian  Officer  and  other  stories.' 

'The  Rainbow.' 

'Amores;  Poems.' 

'TwiUght  in  Italy.'     (Sketches  of  travel.) 

BOOKS  OF  GENERAL  REFERENCE 

William  Archer,  'Poets  of  the  Younger  Generation,'  1902. 

F.  W.  Chandler,  'Aspects  of  Modern  Drama,'  1914. 
W.  L.  Courtney,  'The  Feminine  Note  in  Fiction,'  1904. 
Ashley  Dukes,  'Modem  Dramatists,'  1912. 

John  Freeman,  'The  Modems,'  1916. 

Walter  Lionel  George,  'A  Novelist  on  Novels,'  1918. 

Archibald  Henderson, '  The  Changing  Drama,'  1914. 

Holbrook  Jackson,  'The  Eighteen  Nineties,'  1913. 

Henry  James,  'Notes  on  Novelists,'  1914. 

John  McFarland  Kennedy,  'English  Literature  1880-1905,'  1912. 

Ludwig  Lewisohn,  'The  Modem  Drama,'  1915. 

G.  H.  Mair,  'Modem  English  Literature,'  1914. 

William  Lyon  Phelps,  'Advance  of  the  English  Novel,'  1915. 
Firmin  Roz,  'Le  Roman  Anglais  Contemporain,'  1912. 
R.  A.  Scott-James,  'Modernism  and  Romance,'  1908. 
R.  A.  Scott-James,  'Personality  in  Literature,'  1913. 
Edwin  E.  Slosson,  '  Major  Prophets  of  To-Day,'  Boston,  1914. 
Edwin  E.  Slosson,  'Six  Major  Prophets,'  Boston,  1917. 
Mary  C.  Sturgeon,  'Studies  of  Contemporary  Poets,'  1916. 
Harold  Williams,  'Modem  Enghsh  Writers,'  1918. 

The  End 


INDEX 


Titles  of  Works  are  in  single  quotation  marks.  ^. 

References  to  the  Bibliographies  are  numbered  in  italics. 

Abbey  Theatre,  Dublin,  233, 235,  Archer,  William,  129,  137,  143, 

237.  244, 296. 

Abercrombie,  Lascelles,  58,  245,  Aristotle,  46. 

259,  270,  272,  S75.  'Arms  and  the  Man,'  132,  137, 

'Across  the  Plains,' i>5.  149. 

'Actions  and  Reactions,'  160.  Arnold,  Matthew,  7,  16,  33. 

'  Admiral  Guinea,'  96.  /Art  of  Thomas  Hardy,  The,'  68. 

'Advance  of  the  English  Novell ""'  'Aspects  of  Modern  Drama,'  296. 

296.  Asquith,  H.  H.,  2,  142. 


'Adventures  of  Harry  Rich- 
mond, The,'  32,  87. 

"A.  E.,"  227,  228,  229,  232,  239, 
240,  2Jf3,  24s. 

'After  the  Last  Breath,'  54. 

'Akra  the  Slave,'  274. 

Allahabad  'Pioneer,'  151,  154. 

'Ahnayer's  Folly,'  162,  170,  176, 
177, 179. 

'Alps  and  Sanctuaries,'  73, 74, 80. 

'Amateur  Emigrant,  The,'  89. 

'Amazing  Marriage,  The,'  31, 37. 

'  Amores,' 296. 

'Androcles  and  the  Lion,'  144, 
149. 


'At  the  end  of  the  Passage,'  156. 

'At  the  Hawk's  Well,'  24I. 

'August  1914,' 251. 

Austen,  Jane,  214. 

'Australasan,'57. 

'Author's  Craft,  The,'  217,  222. 

'Authoress  of  the  Odyssy,  The,' 
75, 82. 

'Autobiography  of  a  Super- 
Tramp,'  266,  274. 

'Ave,'  232,  238,  239,  242. 

'Ave  Imperatrix,'  152. 

Baildon,  H.  B.,  96. 
Baker,  G.  P.,  17. 
Balderston,  J.  L.,  276. 


'Ann  Veronica,'  184, 185, 196. 

'Anna  of  the  Five  Towns,'  215,  Balestier,  Wolcott,  157,  160. 

222.  Balfour,  Graham,  96. 

'Anna  Tellwright,'  215.  'Balladof  EastandWest,  A,'  155. 

'Anticipations,' iSff.  'Ballad  of  Fair  Ladies  in  Re- 
Aran  Islands,  232,  242.  volt,  A,'  30. 

297 


298 


INDEX 


y 


'Ballads'  (John  Davidson),  244 
'Ballads'  (John  Masefield),  27 S. 
'Ballads'  (R.  L.  Stevenson),  95. 
'Ballads  and  Poems,'  273. 
'Ballads  and  Poems  of  Tragic 

Life,'  38. 
Barker,  Granville,  137. 
'Barrack   Room   Ballads,'  .156, 

160. 
Bateman,  Virginia,  288. 
'Battle,'  265,  27 It. 
Baudelaire,  293. 
Beaconsfield,  Lord,  2,  151. 
'Bealby,'  186,  197. 
Beardsley,  Aubrey,  156. 
'Beast  and  Man  in  India,' 
'  Beau  Austin,'  96. 
'Beauchamp's  Career,'  32,  37. 
'Beauty,' 248. 
'Bedof  Roses,  A,'277. 
'Being  Her  Friend,'  248. 
'Belgravia,'  44. 
'Bending  of  the   Bough,   The,' 

232,  2J^. 
Bennett,  Arnold,  161,  213-222, 

236,  277. 
Beresford,  J.  D.,  197.  '' 

•Beside  the  Fire,'  225,  2^. 
'Between  the  Lines,'  264. 
'Beyond,'  205,  212,  277. 
Bickley,  Francis,  243. 
'Birds  of  Paradise,  The,'  27 4. 
'Bito'Love,  A,';gJ^. 
Bithell,  Jethro,  243. 
Bjorkman,  Edwin,  291. 
'Black  Arrow,  The,' 95. 
Blake,  William,  226. 
Boer  War,  159. 
'Book  of  Carlotta,  The,'  222. 


'Boon,' 11. 

'  Borderlands,' ;274. 

'Born  for  Nought  Else,'  248. 

'Born  in  Exile,'  110-114,  118. 

Bourgeois,  Maurice,  243. 

Boyd,  Ernest  A.,  233,  243. 

'Boys  and  Girls,' 269. 

Brieux,  184. 

British  Museum  Reading  Room, 

100,  103,  109,  121. 
Brontes,  214. 
'Brook  Kerith,  The,'  242. 
Brooke,  Rupert,   245,  254-260, 

274. 
Brooke,  Stopford,  224,  225,  243. 
Brooks,  Van  Wyck,  197. 
'Brothers  Karamazo,  The,'  281. 
Browning,  Robert,  16,  36,  152, 

244. 
Bull,  Ole,  232. 
'Buried  Alive,'  222. 
Burton,  Richard  E.,  150. 
Butcher,  Professor,  75. 
Butler,  Samuel,  59,  82,  119,  139, 

142,  286,  287. 
'By  the  Ionian  Sea,'  116,  118. 
'By  StiU  Waters,'  24^. 

'Caesar  and  Cleopatra,'  137,  149. 

'Call,  The,'  27. 

Cambridge  University,  61,  79. 

Campbell-Bannerman,  6. 

'Campden  Wonder,  The,'  273. 

'Candida,'  132,  137,  149. 

'Candour  in  English  Fiction,'  58. 

Canaan,  Gilbert,  82,  211,  286- 
288,  295. 

'Captain  Brassbound's  Conver- 
sion,' 137,  149- 


INDEX 


299 


'Captain  Margaret,'  273. 

'Captains  Courageous/  160. 

'Card,  The,'  222. 

Carlyle,  7,  12. 

'Carnival,'  289,^95. 

'  Case  against  the  Classical  Lan- 
guages, The,'  192. 

'Case  of  Equality,  The,'  129, 148. 

'Cashel  Byron's  Profession,'  148. 

'Cathleen  ni  HouUhan,'  232, 233, 
241. 

'Catriona,'55. 

'Celt  and  Saxon,' 37. 

'Celtic  TwiUght,  The,'  226,  S4I, 
24s. 

Cestre,  Charles,  150. 

Chamberlain,  Joseph,  151. 

'Chamber's  Journal,'  40. 

'Chance,'  165,  166,  167,  172, 
173,  174,  179. 

Chandler,  F.W.,g9e. 

'Changing  Drama,  The,'  296. 

'ChangedMan,  A,' J7. 

'  Channel  Passage,  A,'  257. 

Charles,  Cecil,  160. 

'Charles  Dickens:  A  Critical 
Study,' 115-116,  iiS. 


^ 


Chaucer,  249-251. 

'Cherry  Orchard,  The,'  281 

Chesterton,  G.  K.,  75, 160. 

Chicago  'Tribune,'  99. 

'Child  Lovers,'  274- 

'Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  A,' 

90,  95. 
'Chilterns,  The,'  259. 
'Chocolate  Soldier,  The,'  132. 
'Christchurch  Press,'  62,  63. 
'Christmas  Quartette,  The,'  160. 
'Church  in  Wales,  The,'  37. 


Cinema,  4. 

'City  of  Dreadful  Night,  The,' 
160. 

'Civil  and  Military  Gazette' 
(Lahore),  152,  154. 

'Clayhanger,'  213,  216,  219,  220, 
222. 

Clemens,  Will  M.,  160. 

Clodd,  Edward,  18,  39,  98,  118. 

'Coat,  A,'  230. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  103. 

'Collected  Poems'  (W.  H. 
Davies),  274. 

'Collected  Poems  of  Rupert 
Brooke,  The,'  274. 

Collins,  Wilkie,  40. 

Colvin,  Sidney,  89,  96. 

'Commentary,  A,'  208,  212. 

'Common  Sense  of  Munici- 
pal Trading,  The,'  128,  I48. 

Compton,  Edmund,  288. 

Comte,  Auguste,  126. 

'Concessions  to  the  Celt,'  37. 

'Confessions  of  a  Young  Man,' 
24^. 

Conrad,  Joseph,  161-179,  246, 
280. 

'Contemporary  Drama  of  Ire- 
land, The,'  243. 

'Contemporary  Literature,'  39, 
62. 

'Contemporary  Review,'  I48. 

'Comhill,'  37,  67.  .y 

Couch,  Sir  Arthur  Quiller,  92. 

'Countess  Cathleen,  The,'  231, 
232,  241. 

'Country  House,  The,'  200-202, 
207,  212. 

Court  Theatre  (London),  137. 


300  INDEX 

'Courting  of  Dinah  Shad,  The,'  Deacon,  Ren6e  M.,  i50. 

156.  '  Deborah,  A  Play  in  Three  Acts,' 

Courtney,  W.  L.,  296.  275. 

Crawfurd,  Alexander  H.,  197.  Defoe,  Daniel,  68. 

'Crossing  the  Plains,' 89.  'Degenerate's  View  of  Nordau, 

'  Crown  of  Life,  The,'  1 14, 118.  A,'  lJt9. 

'Cruise    of    the    Janet    Nichol  'Deirdre' ("A.  E."),232,;24^. 

among  the  South  Sea  Islands,  'Deirdre'   (J.   M.   Synge),  237, 

The,'  96.  2Ii2. 

'  Cuchulain  of  Muirthemne,'  234.  '  Deirdre '  (W.  B.  Yeats) ,  241 . 

'Cupid and  Common  Sense,' ;2^^.  DeLa  Mare,  Walter  John,  268- 

'  Curie,  Richard,  i  75.  270,275. 

'Cutting  of  an  Agate,  The,'  ^?.  ' Demos,'  101, 118. 

'  Denry  the  Audacious,'  222. 

'  Daffodil  Fields,  The,'  251,  273.  '  Denzil  Quarrier,'  118. 

'Daily  Bread,' 261, 274.  'Departmental     Ditties,'     153, 

'Daily  Chronicle,'  87.  160. 

'  Daily  Mail,'  31 ,  S7.  '  Desperate  Remedies/  40,  52, 57. 

'  Daily  News,'  37.  '  DevU's  Disciple,  The,'  137,  149. 

Daly,  Arnold,  132, 137.  '  Devious  Ways,'  295. 

'Dark  Flower,  The,'  203,  212,  'Dialogue    on    the    Origin    of 

277.  Species,'  82. 

'  Dark  Forest,  The,'  285,  295.  '  Diana  of  the  Crossways,'  29,  30, 

'  Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets,  The,'  33, 37. 

142,  149.  '  Diarmuid  and  Crania,'  232,  238. 

Darton,  F.  J.  Harvey,  222.  Dick,  Ernst,  39. 

Darwin,  Charles,  8,  62,  63,  69-  Dickens,  Charles,  16,  77, 78, 115, 

71,  126.  116,  214,  276. 

'Darwin  among  the  Machines,'  'Discoveries;    a  Volxune  of  Es- 

62,  82.  says,'  24I. 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  70.  Disraeh,  2. 

Darwin,  Sir  Francis,  70.  'Diversity  of  Creatiu*es,  A,'  160. 

'Dauber,' 250-251,273.  'Doctor's  Dilemma,  The,'   140, 

Daudet,  Alphonse,  236.  141,  149. 

Davidson,  John,  244-245.  '  Don  Quixote,'  286. 

Davies,  W.  H.,  266-268, 274.  '  Dorsetshire  Labourer,  The,'  58. 

Davitt,  Michael,  239.  '  Drama  in  Muslin,  A,'  242. 

'  Day's  Work,  The,'  159, 160.  '  Dramatic  Opinions  and  Essays,' 

'  Deacon  Brodie,  '96.  122,149. 


INDEX 


301 


'Dream  Children,' 67. 
Drinkwater,  John,  245, 254,  258, 

'Drums  of  the  Fore  and  Aft, 

The,'  154. 
'Duchess  of  Wrexe,  The,'  282, 

284-285, 295.  v' 

Duffin,  H.  C,  68. 
Duffy,  Sir  Charles  Gavan,  224. 
Duke  of  Connaught,  153. 
Dukes,  Ashley,  296. 
'  Dynamiter,  The,'  95. 
'Dynasts,  The,' 55, 57. 


'Early  Poetry  of  W.  B.  Yeats, 

The,'  2J,3. 
'Earth  and  Air,' 269. 
'  Earth  Breath,  The,'  227, 242.  / 
'Earth's  Secret,'  21.  ^ 

'Ebb Tide,  The,' 91,  P5. 
'Echoes  by  Two  Writers,'  160. 
'Edinburgh;  Picturesque  Notes,'      'Evolution,  Old  and  New,'  70, 

95.  'Examiner,'  73. 

Edinbrn-gh  University,  84. 
'Edinburgh    University    Maga-      'Fabian  Essays,' 128,  ^4^. 


'English  Literature  1880-1905,' 

296. 
'Englishman  Looks  at  the  World, 

An,'  196. 
'Erewhon,'  60,  63-68,  71,  73,  76, 

77, 80, 82. 
'Erewhon  Revisited,'  66,  71,  72, 

76, 77, 82. 
Esdaile,  A.  J.  K.,  39. 
'Essay  on  Comedy,  An,'  33,  34, 

37. 
'Essays'  (Samuel Butler),  S^. 
'Esther  Waters,'  237, 238, 21^. 
'Eternal  Wedding,  The,'  272. 
'Evan  Harrington,'  37. 
'  Evelyn  Innes,'^^^. 
'Everlasting  Mercy,  The,'  248, 

273. 
'Eve's  Ransom,'  118. 
'Evidence  for  the  Resurrection, 

The,'  82. 


X 


zine,'  85. 
'Egoist,  The,'  32,  37. 
'Eighteen-Nineties,  The,'  296. 
'Eldest  Son,  The,'  207, 212. 
EUa,  67. 
EUot,  George,  7,  16,  17,  24,  36, 

116, 214, 276. 
Elton,  Oliver,  2J^. 
'Emancipated,  The,'  118. 
'Emblems  of  Love,'  271, 275. 
'EmiUain  England,'  18, 37. 
'Emmainltaly,'18. 
'Empty  Purse,  The,'  26,  38. 


Fabian  Society,  126, 128,  IJ^. 

'Fabianism  and  the  Fiscal  Ques- 
tion,' lis. 

'Fair  Haven,  The,'  62,  68,  69. 

'Fairy  and  Folk  Tales  of  the 
Irish  Peasantry,'  226. 

'Faith  on  Trial,  A,'  24. 

'Faithful,  The,'  273. 

Falls,  Cyril,  160. 

'FamUiar  Studies  of  Men  and 
Books,'  90, 95. 

'Fanny's  First  Play,'  142-143, 
144,  W. 


302 


INDEX 


'Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd,' 

41,  43,  53,  67. 
'Farewell  to  Poesy,'  27^. 
'Farina,'  37. 
'Father,  The,'  265. 
'Father  and  Son,' 12. 
'  Father  Damien,'  91, 96. 
'Faust,'  66. 
Fay,  brothers,  232. 
'Fear,'  208. 
'Feminine  Note  in  Fiction,  The,' 

296. 
'  Femme  Seule,  La,'  184. 
Fielding,  Henry,  276, 286. 
Figgis,  Darrell,  243. 
'Fires,'  262,  274. 
'First  and  Last  Things,'  18tf,  189, 

196. 
'First  Men  in  the  Moon,  The,' 

183, 196. 
'  First  Year  in  Canterburj-  Settle- 
ment, A,'  82. 
'Five  Nations,  The,'  158, 160. 
'Five  Tales,'  212. 
Flaubert,  105, 114,  281. 
'  Fleet  in  Being,  A,' iea 
'Fleet  Street  Eclogues,'  244. 
Fletcher,  C.  R.  L.,  160. 
'Flowers  of  Passion,'  242. 
'FoUage,'  274. 

'Food  of  the  Gods,  The,'  183, 196. 
Foote,  J.  W.,  148. 
'Footnote  to  History,  A,'  95. 
Forbes-Robertson,  Sir  Johnston, 

137,  138. 
'Fortitude,'  284,  296. 
'Fortnightly  Review,'  16,  18,  37, 

39, 148, 182, 192, 273, 276.       ' 
'France,  December,  1870,'  27. 


'Fraternity,' 202,  212. 
'Freelands,  The,'  203-205,  210, 

212. 
Freeman,  John,  296. 
'Friends,'  274. 

'Friendship  and  Happiness,'  213. 
'From  the  Four  Winds,'  198, 212. 
'From  Sea  to  Sea,' 154. 
'Fugitive,  The,'  212. 
'Future  in  America,  The,'  196. 

Galland,  Ren6, 27. 

'Gallipoli,' 273. 

Galsworthy,  John,  198-212,  276, 
277. 

'Galsworthy,  John,'  212. 

Gaskell,  Mrs.,  7. 

'Gates  of  Wrath,  The,'  215. 

'George  Moore,'  243. 

'George  Gissing,  A  Critical 
Study,'  118. 

George,  Henry,  121, 126. 

George  IH,  55. 

'George  Meredith;  a  Study,'  38. 

George  Meredith;  an  Essay  to- 
wards Appreciation,  38. 

'George  Meredith,  Drei  Ver- 
Buche,'  39. 

'George  Meredith  in  Anecdote 
and  Criticism,'  89. 

'George  Meredith:  Novelist, 
Poet,  Reformer,'  38. 

'GeoVge  Meredith,  sa  Vie,  son 
Imagination,  son  Art,  sa  Doc- 
trme,'  39. 

'George  Meredith:  some  Char- 
acteristics,' 39. 

'George  Meredith:  Some  Rec- 
ollections,' 39. 


/ 


INDEX  303 

'  George  Meredith's  Views,'  37.  'Hail  and  Farewell,'  239-240. 

George,  W.  L.,  277, 296.  Haldane,  Lord,  13. 

'  Georgian  Poetry,'  245.  Hamilton,  Clayton,  96. 

'  Getting  Married,'  141, 144, 149.  Hamlet,  174. 

.  Gibson,    Wilfrid    Wilson,    245,  Hammerton,  J.  A.,  39, 96. 

260-265,  274.  Hamon,  Augustin,  160. 

Gillman,  103.  'Hand  of  Ethelberta,  The,'  43, 
^.    Gissing,  George,  5, 97-118.  52,57. 

Gladstone,  2.  '  Handbook  of  the  Wessex  Coun- 

Gley,  13.  try,'  68. 

'God  the  Invisible  Kmg,'  187,  'Hannah Lynch,' SS. 

196.  'Hap,'  41. 

'God  the  Known  and  God  the  Hardman,  Sir  William,  27. 

Unknown,'  73.  Hardy,  Thomas,  40-58, 161. 

'Gods  of  War,'  24^.  j^-  'Hardy  Country,  The,'  58. 

Goethe,  56.  >*>^  'Hare,  The,' 263. 

Gogin,  Charles,  73.      ^  Harper,  C.  G.,  5S. 

'Golden  Scarecrow,  The,'  282,  Harris,  John  F.,  Sf. 

295.  Harrison,  Austin,  i^S. 

Goncourt,  de,  215.  ^  Harrison,  Frederick,  97,  98,  100, 

'Good  Friday,' ;87S.  >^      118. 

Gosse,  Edmund,  12, 89.  Harrison,  Mrs.  Frederick,  101. 

'Great  Adventure,  The,' ^;gg.  *  Haymarket Theatre,  133. 

'  Great  Catherine,'  144,  IJ^.  ' Heart  of  Wessex,  The,'  68. 

'  Great  Lover,  The,'  258.  Heath,  S.  H.,  68. 

'  Great  Man,  A,'  222.  '  Heather  Field,  The,'  232. 

'  Green  Helmet,  The,'  230, 241 .  Hedgcock,  F.  A.,  68. 

'  Green  Mirror,  The,'  285,  296.  Henderson,  Archibald,  160, 296. 

Green,  J.  T.,  129, 131.  Henderson,  M.  Sturge,  38. 

Gregory,  Lady,  229,  232,  233,  Henley,  W.  E.,  89,  92. 

234, 238, 243.  '  Henry  Brocken,'  275. 

Gregory,  Major  Robert,  231.  'Herald'  (New  York),  154. 

'Grim  Smile  of  the  Five  Towns,  'Her  Heart,'  248. 

The,' 222.  'Heaven,' 258. 

'  Group  of  Noble  Dames,  A,'  52,  '  Hilda  Lessways,'  219, 222. 

67.  'HUl,  The,'  257. 

Gurd,  Tatty,  243.  'History  of  England  during  the 
'  Guy  and  Pauline,'  289, 296.  reign  of  Victoria,'  12. 


304 


INDEX 


'History  of  Mr.  PoUy,  The,'  185, 

197. 
'  Hodge,  as  I  know  him,'  68. 
Holland,  Chve,  68. 
'Homeward.    Songs  by   the 

Way,'  227, 2/^. 
Hone,  J.  M.,  2J!^3. 
'Honeymoon,  The,'  222. 
'Hope,'  208. 
Hopkins,  Thurston,  160. 
Horniman,  Miss,  233. 
'Hoimd  of  Heaven,  The,'  245. 
'Hour  Glass,  The,' ^.^i. 
'House  of  Cobwebs,  The,'  118. 
'House  of  Silence,  The,'  209. 
'How  He  lied  to  her  Husband,' 

132,  IJfi. 
'How  to  Live  on  24  hours  a  day,' 

213. 
Howe,  P.  P.,  160, 243. 
Hueffer,  Ford  Madox,  1 79. 
^       Hughes,  William,  76. 

'Humanism  of  George  Meredith, 

The,'  S9. 
'Humour  of  Homer,  The,'  82. 
Huneker,  James,  122,  lJi9. 
Huxley,  Leonard,  9. 
Huxley,  Thomas,  8,  9,  11,  24, 
^-       181. 
't^       Hyde,  Douglas,  224,  225,  232, 

234, 2Ji3. 
'Hymn  to  Colour,  The,'  25. 
Hyndman,  H.  M.,  127. 

Ibsen,  119,  122,  125,  129,  130, 

131,^45. 
'  Ideals  in  Ireland,'  229, 21^. 
'  Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil,'  241 . 
'Iliad,'  75. 


'Illusions  of  Socialism,  The,'  128, 

14s. 
'  Imaginations  and  Reveries,'  24^. 
'Immaturity,'  121. 
'Impossibihties    of    Anarchism, 

The,'  148. 
'  In  a  Lodging  House,'  267. 
'In  Black  and  White,'  160. 
'Incarnation   of   Krishna   Mul- 

vaney.  The,'  155. 
'In  Childbed,' 54. 
'Indian  Railway  Library,  The,' 

154. 
Independent  Theatre  (London), 

129,  149. 
'Inheritors,  The,'  179. 
'Inland  Voyage,  An,'  89, 96. 
'In  the  Days  of  the  Comet,'  183, 

196. 
'In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen,'  232, 

233, 234, 235, 24^. 
'In  the  Wrong  Box,' 91. 
'  In  the  Year  of  Jubilee,'  118. 
'  Inn  of  TranquiUity,  The,'  212. 
'Interviews  on  the  Revolution  in 

Russia,'  37. 
'Invisible  Man,  The,'  196. 
'  Ireland's  Literary  Renaissance,' 

233, 243. 
'Irish    Literary   Revival,    The,' 

223, 243. 
'Irish  Literary  Society,  London,' 

223. 
Irish  Literary  Theatre,  233,  238. 
Irish  Movement,  The,  223-243. 
Irish  National  Dramatic  Com- 
pany, 232. 
Irish  National  Literary  Society, 

DubUn,  223-224,  243. 


INDEX  305 

Irish  National  Theatre  (Dublin),      'Joseph  Conrad:  A  Study,' 175. 

142.  'Joy,' 206, 312. 

Irish  National  Theatre  Society,      'Jude  the  Obscure,' 51,  53, 57. 

232.  '  'Jump-to-GIoryJane,'5S. 

Irish  Players,  142.  '  Jungle  Books,'  157, 160. 

'Irish  Plays  and  Playwrights,'  'Just  So  Stories,' 158,  i  50. 

S43.  'Justice,' 207,  gig. 

'  Irrational  Knot,  The,'  148.  '  Justice '  (Essay),  209. 
'Island  Nights  Entertainments, 

The,'  92,  95.  Kaye-Smith,  Sheila,  312. 

'  Island  of  Dr.  Moreau,  The,'  19^,.  Kennedy,  Benjamin  Hall,  60. 

' Island  Pharisees,  The,'  199, 207,  Kennedy,  J.  McF.,  396. 

212.  ' Kidnapped,'  90,  92, 95. 

' Isobel  Clarendon,'  105, 1 18.  Kiltartan,  234. 

'Kim,'  159, 160. 

Jackson,  Holbrook,  150, 296.  ' King's  Threshold,  The,'  2U . 

James,  Henry,  161, 166, 167, 168,  Kmgsley,  Charles,  7. 

255-256,  274, 278-281, 296.  Kipling,  Rudyard,  151-160,  161, 
James,  WilUam,  64.  246. 

Japp,A.H.,5e.  "'■  'Kipps,' 181, 183,196. 

'Jean  Christophe,'  286,  287.  Kitchener,  Lord,  142. 

Jerrold,  Walter,  38.  Knoblauch,  Edward,  222. 

'J.  M.  Synge,  A  Critical  Study,'  ICrans,  H.  S.,  24S. 

243. 

'  J.  M.  Synge  and  the  Irish  Dra-  Lamb,  Charles,  67, 83. 

matic  Movement,' ^45.  'Land  of  Heart's  Desire,  The,' 
'J.    M.    Synge    and    the    Irish  231, 241. 

Theatre,'  243.  Lane,  John,  39. 

'Joan  and  Peter,'  181,  191-194,  Lang,  Andrew,  75, 89. 

197.  '  Laodicean,  The,'  47,  52,  57. 

'  Jocelyn,'  198, 212.  Larminie,  W.,  243. 

'John  Bull's  Other  Island,'  139,  'Last  Feast  of  the  Fianna,  The,' 

149.  232. 

'John    Christopher'     (Transla-  Lawrence,  D.  H.,  277,  291-294, 

'^  Hon),  295.  296. 

"John  Eglinton,"  227,  243.  'Lay  Morals,'  86, 95. 

,  Johnson,  Lionel,  58,  231.  Lea,  Herman,  58. 

Jones,  Henry  Arthur,  122.  '  Legal   Eight  Hours   Question, 

Jones,  Henry  Festing,  73,  81,  82.         The,'  I48. 
21 


306  INDEX 

Le  Gallienne,  Richard,  39, 160.  ' Longmans,'  S8. 

'Leonora,'  222.  'Lord  Jim,'  165,  166,  168,  170, 

'  Letter  to  the  Working  Women's  179. 

Association,'  37.                 -^  'Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta,' 

'  Letters  from  America,'  274.  31,37. 

'  Letters  of  Marque,'  154.  '  Lost  Dog,  The,'  208. 

' Letters  of  Robert  Louis  Steven-  ' Lost  Endeavour,'  273. 

son.  The,'  96.  '  Love  among  the  Artists,'  148. 

'Letters  on  General  Election  of  'Love  and  Life,' 215. 

1906,'  37.  'Love  and  Mr.  Lewisham,'  183, 

Lewisohn,  Ludwig,  296.  196. 

"  Liberahsm,"  1.  'Love  in  the  Valley,'  36, 38. 

'Liberty'  (New  York), i 45.  'Love  Songs  of  Connacht,'  225, 

'  Life  and  Habit,'  70, 71, 74, 82.  234,  243. 

'Life's  Handicap,'  152,  156,  160.  Low,  Sidney,  12. 

'  Life's  Little  Ironies,'  52, 67.  '  Luck  or  Cunning,'  70, 82. 

'Life's  Morning,  A,'  115, 118.  'Lucubratio  Ebria,'  63,  71. 
'Life  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson, 

The,'  96.  '  Macaire,'  96. 

'  Light  that  Failed,  The,'  156, 160.  McCabe,  Joseph,  150. 

'Lines    to    a    Friend    visiting  Mackenzie,  Compton,  277,  288- 

America,'  27.  291,  296. 

'  Listeners,  The,'  269, 275.  '  Macmillan's  Magazine,'  165. 

'Literary  History  of  Ireland,  A,'  ' Madame  Bovary,'  281. 

243.  'Maeve,'232. 

'  Literary  Ideals  in  Ireland,'  227,  Magee,  W.  K.,  227. 

243.  '  Mainsail  Haul,  A,'  273. 

'Literary  Movement  in  Ireland,  Mair,  G.  H.,  ^56. 

The,'  228.  '  Major  Barbara,'  139, 149. 

'Little  Brother,'  287, 296.  *  Major  Prophets  of  Today,'  296. 

'  Little  Dream,  The,'  212.  Malory,  225. 

'Little  Man,  and  other  Satires,  '  Man  and  Superman,' 138,  ^4^. 

The,'  212.  'Man  from  the  North,  A,'  215, 

'LiveUhood,'  274-  222. 

Lloyd  George,  2, 6.  '  Man  of  Destiny,  The,'  133, 137, 

'Locked Chest, The,' ^73.    ,  I49. 

Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  13.  '  Man  of  Devon,  A,'  212. 

'Lodging  House  Fire,  The,' 267.  'Man  of   Property,   The,'   119, 

'E^lingdon  Downs,' 252,  ;g75.  20b,  212. 


INDEX 


307 


•  Man  Who  Was,  The,'  156. 

'  Man  Who  Would  be  King,  The,' 

154. 
Manchester,  University  of,  58, 

98,  110. 
'  Mankind  in  the  Making,'  196. 
'  Manon  Lescaut,'  214. 
Mansfield,    Richard,    132,    133, 

137. 
'Many  Inventions,'  157, 160. 
'  Mark  of  the  Beast,  The,'  156. 
'  Marmaduke  at  Forty,'  S95. 
'Marriage,' 186,  J97. 
'  Marriage  Handicap,  The,'  37. 
'Married Life,  The,'  213. 
'  Marty  South's  Reverie,'  53. 
Martyn,  Edward,  232,  237,  238, 

240. 
Marx,  Karl,  121, 126, 127,  I4S. 
'Mary  and  the  Bramble,'  271, 

S76. 
Masefield,   John,  243,  246-253, 

273. 
'  Master  of  Ballantrae,  The,'  95. 
'Matador  of  the  Five  Towns, 

The,'  222. 
Maude,  Cyril,  133-136. 
Maupassant,  105,  163,  215,  216, 

279-280,  293. 
Maxse,  19, 20, 32. 
'Mayor  of  Casterbridge,  The,' 

47,  67. 
Melchisedec,  119. 

MeXXoira  loirro,'  72. 

'Memories'  (Edward  Clodd),  S9, 

118. 
'  Memories  and  Portraits,'  95. 
'  Memories  of  VaiUma,'  96. 


'Mendel,' 287-288,  ^55. 
'  Menelaus  and  Helen,'  257. 
Meredith,  George,  16-39,  40,  68, 

92, 161, 167, 168,  213, 257, 276. 
Michael  Angelo,  141,  293. 
'Milestones,' ^^^. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  7, 126. 
Milligan,  Alice,  232. 
'  Mirror  of  the  Sea,  The,'  179. 
'Misalliance,'  142, 149. 
'Miss  Loo,' 269. 
'Mr.  Boon,' 186. 
'Mr.  Britling  sees  it  Through,' 

187, 197. 
'  Mr.  Perrin  and  Mr.  Traill,'  283- 

284,  296. 
'Mrs.  Grundy,' 269. 
'  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,'  131, 

137,  149. 
Mitchell,  Susan  L.,  243. 
'Mob,  The'  212. 
'Modern  Drama,  The,'  296. 
'  Modern  Dramatists,'  296. 
'  Modern     English     Literature,' 

296. 
'  Modern  English  Writers,'  296. 
'  Modern  Love,'  30, 38, 257. 
'  Modern  Lover,  A,'  24£. 
'  Modern  Painting,'  237, 24^. 
'Modern  Studies,'  243. 
'Modern  Utopia,  A,'  196. 
'  Modernism  and  Romance,'  £96. 
'Moderns,  The,' 296. 
'  Moments  of  Vision,'  67. 
Monkhouse,  G.  F.,  160. 
'  Monthly  Review,'  118. 
'Moods,  Songs  and  Doggerels,' 

212. 


308 


INDEX 


/ 
/ 


Moody  and  Sankey,  120. 
Moore,    George,    232,   237-240, 
2J^,  276. 
,,  Moore,  T.Sturge,  231. 
'  More  New  Arabian  Nights,'  90. 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  64. 
Morley,  Lord,  1, 16, 18,40,98, 101. 
'Morning  Post,' 18, 27. 
Morris,  Wilham,  226. 
'Morted' Arthur,' 225. 
'Mosada,';g-4i. 
'Mother,  The,' 208. 
'Motley,  A,' ;gi^. 
'Motley,' 269,  ^75. 
'  Multitude  and  SoUtude,'  S7S. 
'  Mummer's  Wife,  A,'  2J^. 
'Mummery,' ^95. 
Murray,  Sir  Gilbert,  245. 
'My  Friend   Fitzthunder,'  128, 

'Namgay  Doola,'  156. 
Napoleon,  55, 133. 
'Nation'  (London),  279-280. 
'National  Reformer,'  127,  I48. 
'Nature  Poems,' ^7-4. 
'Naulahka,  The,'  157, 160. 
Nausicaa,  75. 
'Necessity    for    De-AngUcizing 

Ireland,  The,'  224,  2J^. 
'Need  and  Use  of  Getting  Irish 

Literature   into   the    English 

Tongue,  The,'  243. 
Nelson,  55. 
*Nether  World,  The,'  101,  115, 

118. 
'  New  Arabian  Nights,'  90, 95. 
'New  Grub  Street,'  100, 102, 106, 

107, 108, 110, 116, 118. 


'  New  Irish  Library,'  224. 

'New  Machiavelh,  The,'  185, 193, 

197. 
'New  Novel,  The,' 278. 
'  New  Numbers,'  245, 258. 
'New  Poems,' 245,  ;^74. 
'  New  Quarterly  Magazine,'  37. 
'New Review,' 5^,  231. 
'New  Worlds  for  Old,'  196. 
'New  York  Post,' 216. 
'New  York  Sun,' S7. 
Nietzsche,  119. 
'Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,  The,' 

163, 168, 170, 174, 179. 
'Nineteenth  Century,'  118. 
Nordau,  Max,  123. 
Norton,  Mrs.,  29. 
'Nostromo,' 171,172,;  79. 
'Notebooks'    (Samuel    Butler), 

80, 81, 82. 
'  Notes  on  Novelists,'  296. 
'Novelist  on  Novels,  A,'  296. 

'Odd  Women,  The,' iiS. 

'  Ode  to  the  Comic  Spirit,'  34. 

'Odes    in    Contribution  to   the 

Song  of  French  History,'  38. 
O'Donohue,  D.  J.,  2Jf3. 
O'Donohue,  Taidgh,  238. 
'Odyssey,' 75. 
'Old  Age,' 208. 
'Old  Mole,' 287,  ;g55. 
'Old  Mole's  Novel,'  287, 296. 
'  Old  Vicarage,  Granchester,  The,' 

259. 
'Old  Wives'  Tale,  The,'  213, 216, 

218,  220, 222. 
'On  BaUe's  Strand,'  2U. 
'On  Greenhow  Hill,'  156. 


INDEX 


309 


'  On  the  Trail  of  Stevenson,'  96.  Pater,  Walter,  155. 

'  Once  a  Week,'  26,  S7.  ' Patrician,  The,'  202, 212. 

'  One  Before  the  Last,  The,'  257,  Pattison,  Mark,  16. 

'  One  of  Our  Conquerors,'  31,  33,  Paul,  E.  &  C,  150. 

37.  '  Pause  in  the  Strife,  A,'  37. 

'Optimism    in    Browning    and  'Peacock  Pie,' 269,  ^75, 

Meredith,'  39.  Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  18. 

'  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel,  The,y  '  Pentland  Rising,  The,'  85, 96. 

■  32,37.  ^  'PerAmicaSilentiaLunse,'^^-?. 

'Origin  and  Evolution  of   Life,'  'Perfect  Wagnerite,  The,'   125, 


11. 

'Origin  of  Species,  The,'  8, 62. 
Osborn,  Henry  Fairfield,  11. 
Osbourne,  Lloyd,  91, 96. 
Osbourne,  Mrs.  Fanny,  89, 90. 
Ouida,  214. 

'Our  Friend  the  Charlatan,'  118. 
'  Our  Irish  Theatre,'  2Ji3. 
'Outcast  of  the  Islands,   The,' 

170, 179. 
'Over-ruled,'  144,  lli9. 
Owens  College,  Manchester,  98,      'Pierreet  Jean,' 163. 

110.  'Pigeon,  The,'  199,  207,  210, 212. 

Owens  College  Union  Magazine,      Pigou,  A.  C,  39. 

118. 
'Oxford  Poetry,' 245. 
'  Oxford  Point  of  View,  The,'  288. 


129,  lJi9. 
'Personal  Record,   A,'    (Joseph 

Conrad),  175-176,  i75. 
'  Peter  Homunculus,'  295. 
'Phantom  Rickshaw,  The,'  152, 

160. 
Phelps,  W.  L.,  296. 
'Philanderer,  The,'  130, 131, 140, 

ljt,9. 
'PhiUptheKing,'^75. 
Photiades,  Constantin,  39. 


'Pagan  Poems,' ;g4^. 

'  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes,  A,'  41, 62,  53, 

57. 
'Pall  Mall  Gazette,'  37,  68,  101, 

122,  182. 
Palmer,  John,  160, 160. 
'  Parents  and  Children,'  142. 


'  Pilgrim  in  Wales,  A,'  274. 

Pinero,  Sir  A.  W.,  96, 122. 

Pitt,  55. 

'Places  and  People,'  269. 

'  Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills,'  153, 

154, 160. 
'  Playboy  of  the  Western  World, 

The,' 234, 236,  ^>^. 
'  Plays  for  an  Irish  Theatre,'  241- 
'Plays  Pleasant  and  Unpleasant,' 

136, 149. 


'Passionate  Elopement,    The,'      'Poems  and  Ballads  of  Yovmg 

289,  295.  Ireland,'  226. 

'  Passionate  Friends,  The,'  186,      '  Poems  and  Lyrics  of  the  Joy  of 

197.  Earth,'  38. 


/ 


310  INDEX 

'  Poems  of  the  Past  and  Present,'  '  Quartette,  The,'  152. 

57.  '  Quintessence  of  Ibsen,  The,  '125, 

'Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  George  143. 

Meredith,  The,'  38. 

'  Poets  of  Ireland,  The,'  243.  Rabelais,  66. 

'Poets  of  the  Younger  Genera-  'Rainbow, The,' 277, 294, ^96. 

tion,'  244, 296.  Raleigh,  Sir  Walter  A.,  96. 

' Poet 's  Pilgrimage,  A,'  274.  '  Reading  of  Earth,  A,'  38. 

'  PoUte  Farces,'  215.  '  Reading  of  Life,  A,'  22, 38. 

Ponce  de  Leon,  75.  '  Reasonable  Life,  The,'  213. 

'Poor  Man  and  the  Lady,  The,'  'Recessional,  The,'  158, 159. 

40.  'Recollections'    (Lord   Morley), 

'Pot  of  Broth,  The,' ^4^.  16. 

'  Prelude  to  Adventure,  The/^4,  'Recollections  of  J.  M.  Synge,' 

295.                                  '^  243. 

'  Press  Cuttings, '  142, 149.  Reform  Acts,  2. 

'  Pretty  Lady,  The,'  220, 222, 277.  ' Regent,  The,'  222. 

Price,  Arthur,  39.  '  Regret  not  Me,'  54. 

'  Price  of  Love,  The,'  222.  Reid,  Forrest,  243. 

Prideaux,  W.  F.,  96.  'ReUgion  of  H.  G.  Wells,  The,' 

'Prince  Otto,' 90, 95.  197. 

'  Prisoner,  The,'  209.  Rembrandt,  141. 

'  Private  Life  of  Henry  Maitland,  'Representative     Irish     Tales,' 

The,'  98, 118.  226. 

'Private  Papers  of  Henry  Rye-  'Requiem,' 92. 

croft,  The,'  98,  102,  107,  116,  'Research Magnificent, The,' 186, 

118.  197. 

'I*roblem  of  Theism  and  other  'ResponsibiUties,'230,  ^^/. 

Essays,  The'  39.  '  Return,  The,'  275. 

'Profitable  Reading  of  Fiction,  'Return  of  the  Native,  The,'  43, 

The,'5S.  48,50,53,57. 

'  Progress  and  Poverty,' 1  £6.  'Reveries  over  Childhood   and 

'  Prose  Papers,'  274.  Youth,'  241 . 

' Prussian OflBcer,  The,' ^96,  'Revival    of    Irish    Literature, 

'  Psahn  of  Montreal,  A,'  82.  The,'  224. 

'  Puck  of  Pook's  Hill,'  158, 160.  '  Revolutionist's  Handbook,  The,' 

'  Pygmalion,'  144, 149.  138,  140. 


INDEX 


U^ 


311 


y 


'Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  La,' 
27. 

'  Rewards  and  Fairies,'  158, 160. 

'Rheingold/129. 

'Rhoda  Fleming,' Sr. 

Rhodes,  Cecil,  151. 

'  Riders  to  the  Sea,  The,'  236, 2i^. 

'Rising  City,  The,' 285. 

'Roadside  Sketches,'  26. 

'R.L.Stevenson,' 56. 

'R.    L.   Stevenson.    A   Critical 

Study,' 83, 96. 
'R.  L.  Stevenson;  A  Record,  an 

Estimate  and  a  Memorial,'  96. 
'Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  A  Life 

Study  in  Criticism,'  96. 
'Robert  Louis  Stevenson  as  a 

Dramiatist,'  96. 
Roberts,  Moriey,  98,  101,  107, 

118. 
RoUand  Romain,  286, 287. 
'Remain  Anglais  Contemporain, 

Le,'  296. 
'Romance:  A  Novel,'  119. 
Rossetti,  226. 

'  Round  the  Corner,'  287, 295. 
Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh,  84. 
Roz,  Firmin,  296. 
Ruskin,  7, 21. 
Russell,  G.  W.,  227, 21,2. 
Ryan,  W.  P.,  223, 231, 21,3. 

'  Sacred  and  Profane  Love,'  222. 
'  Sage  Enamoured  and  the  Honest 

Lady,  The,'  30, 88. 
'St.  Ives,' 92, 95. 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 

61. 
St.  Paul,  73,  74. 


'  Saints  and  Lodgers,'  267. 

'Sale  of  St.  Thomas,  The,'  271, 

275. 
Salisbury,  Lord,  9. 
'Salt  Water  Ballads,'  246, 273. 
'Salutation;  a  Poem  on  the  Irish 

Rebemonofl916,';g4^. 
Salvation  Army,  139, 140. 
'Salve,'  239,  242. 
Sanders,  Lloyd  C,  12. 
'Sandford  and  Merton,'  144. 
Sandra  Belloni,  18,  87. 
'Sanity  of  Art,  The,'  140, 149. 
'Saturday  Review,'  122, 149, 182. 
SavileClub,89. 
Schaefer,  Professor,  13. 
'School  History  of  England,  A,' 

160. 
'Science  of  Fiction,  The,'  68. 
Scott-James,  R.  A.,  296. 
Scott,  Walter,  83,  214. 
'Scribe,  The,'  270. 
'Scribner's  Magazine,'  37. 
'Sea  Warfare,' i60. 
Seccombe,  Thomas,  118, 197. 
'Second  Blooming,  The,'  277. 
'Secret  Agent,  The,'   165,  172, 

176,  i 79. 
'Secret  Rose,  The,'  241. 
'Seekers,' 248. 
Seeley,  Professor,  151. 
SeUncourt,  Basil  de,  88. 
'Sentimentahsts,  The,'  87. 
'Sermon  to  our  later  Prodigal 

Son,  A,'  26. 
'Set  of  Six,  A,' i 79. 
'Seven  Seas,  The,'  158, 160. 
'Shadow  Line,  The,'   177,  178, 

179. 


312 


INDEX 


/ 


'Shadowy  Waters,  The,'  24I. 
Shakespeare,  30,  49,  55, 123, 137, 

142. 
'Shakespeare's  Sonnets   Recon- 
sidered,' 76. 
'Shaving  of  Shagpat,  The,'  37. 
Shaw,  Bernard,  69,  75,  119-150, 

190,  197. 
SheUey,  226. 

Sherman,  Stuart  P.,  39,  52. 
Sherren,  Wilkinson,  58. 
'Shewing-up  of  Blanco  Posnet, 

The,'  141,  149. 
Sidgwick,  Henry,  12. 
Sigerson,  Dr.,  224. 
'Silver  Box,  The,'  205,  212. 
'  Silverado  Squatters,  The,'  90, 95. 
Simpson,  E.  B.,  96. 
'Sing  a  Song  of  Sixpence,'  36. 
'Sinister  Street,'  289,  291,  296. 
'Sister  Songs,'  245. 
'Sister  Theresa,'  S4£. 
'Six  Major  Prophets,'  197,  296. 
SkimpMDle,  Herbert,  150. 
Slosson,  Edwin  E.,  197,  296. 
'Social  Forces  in  England  and 

America,'  189,  196. 
'Socialism  and  Superior  Brains,' 

148. 
'Socialism  for  MilUonaires,'  128, 

IJ^. 
' Soldiers  Three,' i^O. 
'Some    Reminiscences'    (Joseph 

Conrad),  175-176,  179. 
'Songs  of  Childhood,'  268, 276. 
'Songs  of  Joy,'  27 4. 
'Songs  of  Travel,' 55. 
'Sonnets  and  Poems,'  27S. 
'Sons  and  Lovers,'  293,  296. 


'Soul  of  a  Bishop,  The,'  187, 197 
Southwark  Irish  Literary  Club, 

223. 
'Soul's  Destroyer,  The,'  27 4. 
'Spectator,'  82,  118. 
'Speculative  Dialogues,'  275. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  126. 
Spencer,  Edmimd,  226. 
'Stalky  &  Co.,'  152,  159,  160. 
'Star'  (London),  122,  186. 
Stephen,  Leshe,  89. 
Sterne,  Lawrence,  89. 
'Stevenson,'  96. 
'Stevenson  Originals,'  96. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  83-96. 
Stevenson,  Mrs.  R.  L.,  96. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.  B.,  96. 
'Stevensoniana,'  96. 
'Stonefolds,  The,'  260,  274. 
'Stories  from  Carleton,'  226. 
'Story  of  Muhammed  Din,  The,' 

154. 
'Story  of  the  Gadsbys,  The,'  160. 
'Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and 

Mr.  Hyde,  The,'  90,  91,  95. 
'Strange    Ride    of    Morrowbie 

Jukes,  The,'  154. 
'Street  of  To-day,  The,'  273. 
Streetfield,  R.  A.,  59. 
'Strife,'  206,  210,  212. 
Strong,  Isobel  Osboume,  96. 
'Stucco  House,  The,'  295. 
'Studies of  Contemporary  Poets,' 

262,  274. 
'Studies  of  the  Renaissance,'  155, 
Sturgeon,  Mary  C,  262,  274, 296. 
Suffrage  for  Women,  2,  28,  29. 
'Suffrage  for  Women,  The,'  37. 
'Sweeps  of  '98,  The,'  273. 


/ 


INDEX 


313 


Swift,  Jonathan,  71.  'Three  Plays  for  Puritans,'  137, 
Swinburne,  Algernon,  16,  244.  149. 

'Swing,  The,'  264.  'Thyrza,'  115,  118. 

Swinnerton,  Frank,  83,  96, 118.  'The  Time  Machine,'  182,  196. 

'Sylvia  Scarlett,'  277,  290-291,  'Times,'  London,  S7,  155, 

^96.  'Time's  Laughing  Stocks,'  57. 

'Synge  and  the  Ireland  of  his  'The   Tinker's   Wedding,'   233, 

Time,'^-^.  235,^4^. 

Synge,  J.  M.,  223,  231,  231-237,  'The  Title,'  2^£. 

S48.  'To-day,'  148. 

'Toine,'293. 

'The  Taking  of  Lungtungpen,'  Tolstoy, 279. 

154.  'Tono-Bungay,'  181,  183, 196. 

'Tales  of  the  Five  Towns,'  SS8.  'Traffics  and  Discoveries,'  160. 

'  Tales  of  Unrest,'  1 79.  '  The  Tragedy  of  Nan,'  £73. 

Tarascon,  236.  'The  Tragedy  of  Pompey  the 
'Tarpauhn  Muster,  A,'  S73.  Great,'  £73. 

Tchekoff,  292.  'The  Tragic  Comedians,'  16,  37. 

Tennyson,    Alfred,   16,   24,    16,  'Travels  with  a  Donkey  in  the 

152,  244.  Cevennes,'  89,  96. 

Terry,  Ellen,  133.  'Treasure  Island,'  90,  91,  96. 

'Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles,'  48,  'The  Trespasser,'  293,  296. 

67.  'Trespassers  will  be  Prosecuted,' 
'  Tess's  Lament,'  53.  144. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  16,  116,  214.  Trevelyan,  G.  M.,  38. 


Trinity  College,  Dublin,  235. 
'The  Trumpet  Major,'  47,  52, 

65,  67. 
'The  Truth  about  an  Author,' 

213,  219,  S£2. 
Tiu-genev,  215. 


'These  Twain,'  ££S. 

'This  Misery  of  Boots,'  196. 

'Thomas     Hardy;     a     critical 

Study,'  276. 
'Thomas  Hardy;  A  Study  of  the 

Wessex  Novels,'  68. 
'Thomas  Hardy'  (Contemporary      Twain,  Mark,  154. 

Writers  Series),  68.  'Twihght  in  Italy,'  S96. 

'Thomas  Hardy,  Penseur  et  Ar-      'The  Twisting  of  the  Rope,'  232. 

tiste,'  68.  '  'Twixt  Land  and  Sea,'  179. 

'  Thomas  Hardy's  Wessex,'  68.  '  Two  on  a  Tower,'  47,  52, 67. 

Thompson,  Francis,  244-245.  Tyndall,  10, 11, 12, 13,  20. 

'  Thoroughfares,'  274.  '  Typhoon,'  1 79. 

'Those  United  States,'  222. 


314 


INDEX 


Ulysses,  75. 
'Unborn,  The,' 54. 
'Unclassed,  The,'  105, 118. 
'Unconscious  Memory,'  70,  71, 

82. 
'Under  the  Deodars,'  160. 
'Under   the   Greenwood   Tree,' 

40,  43,  54,  67. 
'Under  Western  Eyes,'  172,  179. 
'Underwoods,'  95. 
'UneVie,'216. 
'Unsocial  Socialist,  An,'  IJ^S. 
'UntiUed  Field,  The,'  242. 
'Up  and  Down,' 269. 
'Utopia,'  64. 

'Vailima  Letters,  The,'  92,  95. 
'Vale,'  239,  2Jt2. 
'Vashti,'271. 
Velasquez,  141. 
'Veranilda,'  103,  116,  118. 
Verlaine,  293. 
Victorian  Jubilee,  5. 
'Victory,'  165, 172, 173, 174, 179. 
^„    'VillaRubein,  198,  ;?i:g. 
j)^'        'Virginibus  Puerisque,'  90,  95. 
^  'Virginity  and  Perfection,'  272. 

'Vittoria,'  16,  18,  37. 
VuUiamy,  Marie,  18,  24. 

Wagner,  120, 125, 126, 129. 
Walkley,  A.  B.,  143. 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  8. 

/    Walpole,  Hugh,  280-286,  295. 
V'     'Wanderings  of  Oisin,  The,'  225, 
/  226, 241. 

'War  in  the  Air,  The'  196. 
'War  of  the  Worlds,  The,'  196. 
War,  The  Great,  15,  41, 129, 178. 


'Warning  to  provident  Land- 
lords,' IJ^. 

'Waste,' 248. 

'Way  of  All  Flesh,  The,'  61,  77- 
80,  82,  287. 

'W.B.  Yeats,' ^^. 

'W.  B.  Yeats,  a  Critical  Study,' 
2IiS. 

'W.  B.  Yeats,  and  the  Irish  Lit- 
erary Revival,'  2ItS. 

Webb,  Sidney,  3,  128. 

'Wee  Willie  Winkie,'  160. 

'Weir  of  Hermiston,'  92,  93,  95. 

Weissmann,  71. 

'Well  Beloved,  The,'  52,  57. 

'Well  of  the  Saints,  The,'  235, 
2Ii2. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  11,  97,  98,  101, 
118,  128,  161,  180-197,  198, 
276,  277. 

'Wells,  H.  G.;  a  Biography,'  197. 

'  Wessex '  (C .  G .  Harper) ,  68. 

'  Wessex '  (Clive  Holland) ,  68. 

'Wessex  of  Romance,  The,'  68. 

'Wessex  of  Thomas  Hardy,  The,' 
68. 

'  Wessex  Poems,'  67. 

'Wessex  Tales,' 52, 57. 

'Westminster  Gazette,'  37, 188. 

Weygandt,  CorneUus,  243. 

"W.H.,"76. 

'  What  is  Coming,'  196. 

'What  the  PubUc  Wants,'  219, 
222. 

'Wheels  of  Chance,  The,'  183, 
196. 

'When  the  Sleeper  Wakes,'  182, 
196. 

'^hin;  274. 


INDEX 


315 


'Whirlpool,  The,'  118. 
'  White  Peacook,  The,'  292,  S96. 
'Whom  God  hath  Joined,'  222. 
*Widow  in  the  Bye  Street,  The,' 

249,  S7S. 
'Widowers'   Houses,'    129,    131, 

149. 
'Widowing    of    Mrs.    Holroyd, 

The,'  291,  296. 
'  Wife  of  Sir  Isaac  Harman,  The,' 

186, 197. 
Wilberforce,  Bishop,  8. 
'  Wild  Swans  at  Coole,  The,'  24 1. 
Wilde,Oscar,  155, 156. 
Wilkins,A.S.,ilS. 
'Will  Warburton,'  103,  116,  11^.. 
'  WiUiam  Shakespeare,'  273. 
Wilhams,  Harold,  296. 
'Wind  among  the  Reeds,  The,' 

230, 1^4^ 
Windle,  Bertram,  58. 
'  Witches  and  Fairies,'  269. 
'  Within  the  Tides,' J75. 
'Woman,' 215. 
Woman  Suffrage,  2, 28, 29. 


'  Wooden  Horse,  The,'  295. 
'  Woodlanders,  The,'  48, 53, 57. 
'Woods of  Westermain,  The,'  21. 
Wordsworth,  19, 21. 
'  Workers  in  the  Dawn,'  100, 118. 
'World'  (London),  122, 154, 155. 
'  World  of  H.  G.  Wells,  The,'  197. 
'  World  Set  Free,  The,'  186, 197. 
'Wrecker,The,'91,95. 
'WrongBox,The,'95. 

Yates,  Edmund,  154. 

Yeats,  W.  B.,  223,  225-231,  232, 

233,234,238,^4^^45. 
'Yellow  Book,  The' 215. 
'You  Never  Can  Tell,'  133-136. 

137, 149. 
'Young  Earnest,'  295. 
'Young  Folks,' 90. 
'  Your  United  States,'  222. 
'Youth,' 168, 177,  J  79. 
'Youth in  Memory,'  35. 

Zola,  105,  106. 


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